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MEMORIAL    ADDRESSES 


ON   THE 


IFE    AND    LHARACTER 


OF 


HENRY  WILSON, 

(  VICE-PRESIDENT  OF  THE  UNITED  STATES,  ) 


DELIVERED    IN   THE 


JANUARY  21,  1876, 


WITH   OTHER 


CONGRESSIONAL  TRIBUTES  OF  RESPECT. 


PUBLISHED  RY  ORDER  OF  CONGRESS. 


L  I  U  Ji 

UNIVEHS 

CALIFO 


WASHINGTON: 

GOVERNMENT     PRINTING     OFFICE. 
I8;6. 


It  Y 

TV    OF 


THE   DEATH,  FUNERAL  SERVICES,  AND   BURIAL 

OF 

HENRY   WILSON, 

VICE-PRESIDENT    OF    THE    TJJSriTEID    STA.TES, 
NOVEMBER  1O— DECEMBER  1,  1875. 


HENRY  WILSON,  Vice-President  of  the  United  States,  was  taken 
ill  at  the  Capitol,  on  the  morning  of  November  10,  1875,  and  was 
taken  to  the  Vice-President's  room,,  where,  after  his  friends  had 
began  to  regard  him  as  nearly  well  again,  he  passed  away  on  the 
morning  of  November  22,  at  20  minutes  after  7  oclock. 

The  funeral  ceremonies  over  the  remains  of  the  Vice-President 
were  performed  in  the  Senate  Chamber  on  Friday,  November  26, 
under  the  direction  of  a  committee  of  arrangements,  consisting  of 
Senators  Thurman,  of  Ohio,  and  Morrill,  of  Vermont;  Representa- 
tives  Garfleld,  of  Ohio,  and  Randall,  of  Pennsylvania ;  the  Hon. 
Hamilton  Fish,  Secretary  of  State;  the  Hon.  Mr.  Justice  Clifford, 
of  the  Supreme  Court ;  and  the  Hon.  William  Dennison,  a  Com 
missioner  of  the  District  of  Columbia. 

The  President  of  the  United  States  and  his  Cabinet,  the  Diplo 
matic  Corps,  the  Supreme  Court,  members  of  Congress,  Depart 
ment  officials,  officers  of  the  Army,  Navy,  and  Marine  Corps,  dele 
gations  from  the  New  England  Eepublican  Association  and  the 
Grand  Army  of  the  Republic,  citizens  of  Massachusetts,  and  per 
sonal  friends  and  relatives  of  the  deceased,  were  assigned  seats 
on  the  floor  of  the  Senate  Chamber. 


4  THE  DEATH,  FUNEEAL   SEE  VICES,  AND  BURIAL  OF 

At  half  past  ten  the  remains  were  brought  from  the  Kotunda 
into  the  Senate  Chamber,  preceded  by  Eev.  Dr.  Sunderland  the 
Chaplain  of  the  Senate,  the  Sergeant-at-Arms  of  the  Senate,  and 
the  committee  of  arrangements,  and  escorted  by  the  pall-bearers, 
Senators  Edmunds,  Sherman,  Bayard,  and  Whyte,  and  Repre 
sentatives  Elaine,  Mills,  Wood,  and  Kasson;  as  the  body  was 
brought  into  the  Senate  Chamber,  the  Chaplain  read  a  passage 
from  the  Bible,  commencing:  "Lord,  make  me  to  know  thy  ways." 

After  the  coffin  had  been  placed  on  the  catafalque,  Hon.  T.  W. 
Ferry,  President  of  the  Senate  pro  tern.,  announced  that  appropri 
ate  services  would  be  performed.  Eev.  Dr.  Sunderland  then  read 
brief  selections  from  the  Bible,  followed  by — 

THE    MEMORIAL   DISCOURSE, 
BY  REV  J.  E.  RANKIN,  D.  D. 

REV.  XIV,  13:  "And  I  heard  a  voice  from  Heaven,  saying  unto 
me,  Write,  Blessed  are  the  dead  which  die  in  the  Lord  from  hence 
forth  :  Yea,  saith  the  Spirit,  that  they  may  rest  from  their  labors, 
and  their  works  do  follow  them." 

All  that  is  mortal  of  HENRY  WILSON,  of  Massachusetts,  Vice- 
Presideut  of  the  United  States,  lies  enshrined  in  death's  stillness 
before  us.  He  rests  from  his  labors,  and  his  works  do  follow  him. 
The  nation  pauses  in  her  grief  beside  his  open  grave.  Her  great 
men,  her  chief  captains,  her  mighty  men,  every  bondman  that  was. 
and  every  freeman  that  is,  brings  some  tribute  of  honor  and  of  love 
to  lay  upon  his  dust.  Her  deep-voiced,  cannon  lament  him.  Her 
proud  ensign,  which  his  twenty  years  of  public  service  contributed 
so  much  to  leave  full  high  advanced,  ay,  to  cleanse  of  every  stigma 
and  shame  in  the  world's  eye,  and  in  the  eye  of  posterity,  droops 
tenderly  above  him.  Even  Nature  herself  has  put  on  the  spirit  of 
heaviness,  and  the  very  clouds  drop  tears. 

In  this  honored  place,  whose  chief  seat  is  now  vacant,  a  place 
which  has  so  often  echoed  to  his  voice,  and  where  he  has  always 
stood,  the  unflinching,  the  incorruptible  defender  of  human  dig 
nity  and  human  rights;  where  he  has  "battled  for  the  true  and  the 


HENRY   WILSON. 


just,"  we,  the  highest  and  the  lowliest,  his  Associates  in  Govern 
ment,  his  fellow-citizens — heirs  alike  of  the  heritage  of  freedom, 
which  he  has  done  so  much  to  transmit  unimpaired,  replenished 
with  new  life — gather  for  a  brief  solemnity.  It  is  fitting  that  our 
words  be  few. 

HENRY  WILSON  was  the  product  of  New  England.  If  there  was 
iron  in  his  blood,  if  there  was  strength  in  his  muscle,  if  there  was 
backbone  in  his  frame,  he  owed  it,  in  part,  to  the  tuition  of  that 
sterile  and  rocky  soil ;  to  the  cold  and  inclement,  the  stern  and 
serious  aspects  of  that  uninviting  coast  to  which  the  Pilgrims  came. 
Ay,  more  than  this,  HENRY  WILSON  was  the  product  of  the  New 
England  idea — now  become  the  American  idea  :  That  man  is  man, 
and  nothing  can  be  greater ;  and  that  when  God  made  man  in  His 
own  image.  He  made  him  to  have  dominion,  first,  over  himself,  and, 
then,  over  just  as  vast  an  empire  among  men,  as,  under  God,  he 
could  subject  to  himself. 

HENRY  WILSON  was  ambitious.  Let  us  thank  God  that  he  was. 
When,  on  the  16th  day  of  February,  1812,  he  first  saw  the  light  of 
inortallife,  he  was  the  heir  of  three  generations  of  poverty;  the 
descendant  of  three  generations  of  ancestors  who  had  barely  kept 
soul  and  body  together;  who,  in  that  rough  and  rugged  half- wilder 
ness  of  his  native  New  Hampsire,  had,  one  after  another,  fought  a 
losing  battle  with  life,  until  the  grave  covered  them.  Apprenticed 
to  a  small  farmer  at  ten  years  of  age,  and  taking  the  hard  knocks  and 
sore  deprivations  of  a  chore-boy,  at  that  period,  when  more  favored 
young  men  are  nursed  and  pampered  and  crammed  in  school  and 
in  college;  studying  the  rudiments  of  his  native  tongue  aud  the 
history  and  politics  of  his  native  country  by  the  light  of  pine-knots, 
and  by  the  midnight  flashes  of  smoldering  back-logs,  he  needed 
all  his  ambition. 

HENRY  WILSON  was  ambitious ;  but  his  ambition  was  ambition  to 
serve,  to  bear  burdens,  to  meet  responsibilities,  to  perform  labors; 
to  stand  in  the  front  rank — not  so  much  that  he  might  lead,  as 
that  he  might  take  the  hard  knocks  of  a  leader;  that  he  might 
somewhere  and  at  some  time,  anywhere  and  at  any  time,  dp  the 
country  yeoman  service,  like  that  of  Washington  and  Jefferson  aud 
Adams;  that  he  might  enter  into  the  labors  of  these  men,  into 
whose  spirit  he  had  been  baptized  as  he  worked  that  sterile  Yankee 


THE  DEATH,  FUNERAL  SERVICES,  AND  BURIAL  OF 


farm.  And  during  all  that  dreary  apprenticeship  of  his  boyhood 
and  youth,  illumined  only  as  he  forecast  the  possible  future — 
during  all  those  self-denying  night-hours  of  toil;  and,  later  in  life, 
at  Natick,  in  the  State  of  his  adoption,  under  the  shadow  of  Bun- 
kei's  Hill  monument,  and  in  close  neighborhood  to  Lexington  and 
Concord,  when  he  was  thinking  out  his  thoughts  to  the  music  of 
the  hammer  upon  the  lapstone;  when  he  was  measuring  his  sword 
in  debate  with  the  merchants  and  lawyers  of  Boston,  he  was  gird 
ing  himself  less  for  leadership,  less  for  dignities  and  honors,  than 
for  life-long  service.  He  sought  places  of  service;  he  always  served 
in  them.  It  was  to  him,  as  though  he  had  caught  this  counsel  from 
his  communings  with  the  Revolutionary  period — as  though  the 
genius  of  his  native  land  had  said  to  him,  in  the  dreams  of  his  boy 
hood,  "  Whosoever  of  you  will  be  the  chiefest,  shall  be  servant  of  all ;" 
and  as  though  he  had  been  determined  in  his  inmost  soul,  that  by 
that  sign  he  would  conquer.  It  was  thus  that  he  came — 

To  mold  a  mighty  State's  decrees, 

And  shape  the  whisper  of  the  throne. 

In  making  up  our  estimate  of  this  man's  character,  the  vast,  the 
prodigious  achievements  of  his  life,  let  us  remember  its  humble 
beginnings;  let  us  remember  that  when  Charles  Sumner,  the 
Chevalier  Bayard  of  Freedom,  whose  snow-white  colors  were 
always  seen  in  the  thickest  of  the  fight,  and  stained,  alas !  with 
his  own  blood,  was  studying  Classics  in  the  Boston  Latin  School, 
and  walking  beneath  the  favored  shades  of  Harvard,  a  lad,  to 
whose  moral  intuitions,  as  a  leader  of  the  Free  Soil  movement,  he 
was  to  owe  his  first  seat  in  the  United  States  Senate,  and  who  was 
to  become  his  worthy  associate  and  compeer  in  this  foremost  body 
of  the  nation,  was  earning  his  livelihood  by  day,  and  storing  his 
mind  by  night,  on  a  poverty-stricken  farm  of  New  Hampshire ; 
and  that  when  Charles  Sumuer  was  sitting  at  the  feet  of  such  men 
as  Judge  Story,  was  in  the  Cambridge  Law  School  as  scholar  and 
teacher;  was  traveling  and  residing  in  Europe;  when  he  was 
drinking  at  the  very  fountain-heads,  both  at  home  and  abroad, 
the  principles  of  international  and  constitutional  law,  Henry 
Wilson  was  working  in  his  shoemaker's  shop  at  Natick  until  mid 
night,  speaking  in  debating  societies  made  up  of  his  fellow-work 
men,  and  slowly  lifting  himself  up  until  he  became  the  man  whom 


HENRY  WILSON. 


Massachusetts  delighted  to  honor,  and  by  whom  she  has  been  so 
honored  in  return. 

And  in  the  great  cause  of  Human  Freedom,  it  is  beautiful  to  see 
how  these  two  great  men  of  Massachusetts,  born  only  one  year 
apart,  starting  so  differently  in  life,  educated  so  differently,  sup 
ported  and  complemented  each  other.  The  one  a  man  of  books, 
the  other  a  man  of  men  ;  the  one  a  man  of  ideas,  the  other  a  man 
of  facts;  the  one  a  man  of  the  few,  the  other  a  man  of  the  many; 
the  one  closely  following  his  ideal  standard ;  sometimes  almost 
losing  himself  and  being  lost  to  the  country  in  his  distance  of 
advance  before  the  nation,  the  other  always  keeping  step  with  the 
grand  movement  of  the  people,  going  forward  only  so  fast  as  his 
true  popular  instinct  taught  him  that  the  people  were  ready  to 
follow.  In  these  two  men,  so  unlike  and  yet  so  representative  of 
extremes  in  American  society,  the  patrician,  the  plebeian,  was  the 
New  England  idea,  incarnated,  represented  on  this  floor. 

HENRY  WILSON  had  a  cause  in  which  he  believed.  He  believed 
in  it  as  the  cause  of  man ;  ay,  he  believed  in  it,  also,  as  the  cause 
of  God,  who  had  become  incarnate  and  walked  among  men  that 
he  might  impress  it  upon  us;  that  he  might  show  the  value  of 
man;  that  he  might  illustrate  His  own  Golden  Eule.  In  fact,  Mr. 
WILSON  never  could  advocate  anything  in  which  he  did  not  believe. 
He  was  not  of  such  facile  make,  that  he  could  put  on  the  semblance 
of  sincerity  and  earnestness.  At  the  basis  of  all  his  action,  must  be 
sincere  moral  conviction.  He  never  could  take  what  he  conceived 
to  be  the  wrong  side  of  a  question,  even  in  the  Natick  Debating  So 
ciety.  He  would  always  buy  off  or  beg  off,  and  get  upon  what  ke 
regarded  the  right  side,  and  then  he  was  himself;  then  he  was  a 
host !  He  was  never  afraid  of  being  lonely,  if  he  was  on  the  right 
side.  He  knew  the  meaning  of  these  lines  of  the  poet  Faber — 

Thrice  blest  is  he  to  whom  is  given 

The  instinct  that  can  tell 
That  God  is  on  the  field,  when  He 

Is  most  invisible. 

When,  as  a  delegate  from  Massachusetts  to  the  National  Conven 
tion  in  Philadelphia  in  1848,  he  repudiated  the  action  of  the  con 
vention;  standing,  as  he  did,  almost  alone,  resisting  the  compli 
mentary  attentions,  shall  I  say  blandishments,  of  such  a  man  as 


THE  DEATH,  FUNERAL  SERVICES,  AND  BURIAL  OF 


Daniel  Webster  and  the  other  great  leaders  of  the  Whig  party, 
these  were  his  words  to  his  constituents:  "No  hope  of  political 
reward,  no  fear  of  ridicule  or  denunciation  will  deter  ine  from  act 
ing  up  to  my  convictions  of  duty."  There  spoke  the  men  of  1G20 ; 
the  men  who  had  left  England  and  Holland  for  conscience'  sake. 
But  even  the  sage  of  Marshfield,  who  daily  looked  off  upon  the  sea 
which  brought  them  hither,  and  who  had  aided  in  building  their 
tombs  and  garnishing  their  sepulchers,  even  he  did  not  know 
their  voice.  Whig  men  knew,  and  Democrat  they  knew,  but 
what  was  this?  Here  was  a  new  factor  in  American  politics. 
Conscience  and  God  had  entered  there.  Convictions  of  duty!  Mr. 
WILSON  had  espoused  the  cause  of  Freedom  from  convictions  of 
duty;  and  from  that  moment  his  pathway  to  the  eminence  he  se 
cured,  and  from  which  he  stepped  off  into  the  unseen  world,  was 
just  as  sure  as  there  is  a  God  in  Heaven,  or  that  He  has  said, 
"Them  that  honor  Me  I  will  honor." 

It  is  customary  to  speak  of  the  services  which  great  men  render 
a  sacred  cause.  Others,  on  other  occasions,  will  speak  of  Mr.  WIL 
SON'S  services  to  the  cause  of  Freedom.  There  is  another  aspect 
of  this  subject  quite  as  important,  and  for  us  more  appropriate. 
No  great  man  ever  helps  a  great  cause,  so  much  as  that  great 
cause  develops,  elevates,  and  ennobles  him.  For,  if  to  belittle 
truth,  belittle  a  man,  to  accept  and  defend  it,  ennobles  him. 

It  was  the  peculiar  good  fortune  of  HENRY  WILSON,  that  he  had 
the  moral  instinct  to  espouse  the  cause  of  Freedom  ;  to  send  down 
the  roots  of  his  maturing  manhood  into  such  strong  and  generous 
soil.  And  all  the  buffetings  and  storms  of  the  conflict  which  he 
encountered  only  made  him  stronger  and  more  heroic,  rooted  his 
nature  deeper  in  the  great  principles  which  are  at  the  foundation 
of  all  human  progress. 

Mr.  WILSON  did  not  espouse  a  cause,  to  ride  on  it  into  power. 
He  took  it  for  better  or  worse;  to  rise  with  it  or  fall  with  it;  and 
when  this  cause  rose,  he  rose  upon  its  crest,  and  that,  partly,  be 
cause  the  cause  itself  and  his  consecration  to  it  had  made  him 
worthy  to  rise — had  made  him  one  of  its  truest  and  best  exponents 
and  champions.  And  if  other  men  have  failed  under  the  severe  tests 
which  he  withstood,  if  their  feet  have  been  tangled  in  the  snares 
which  the  Tempter  sets  for  great  men  as  well  as  for  other  men,  it 


HENRY   WILSON. 


may  be  partly  because  they  were  never  so  under  tuition  to  the  same 
holy  cause;  in  serving  that  cause  they  were  serving  themselves. 
If  you  tell  me  that  HENRY  WILSON  devoted  his  whole  life  to  the 
cause  of  Human  Freedom — that  there  was  no  danger  he  would  not 
dare,  no  toil  he  would  not  endure,  no  self-sacrifice  he  would  not 
make  to  advance  it,  to  make  its  triumphs  permanent — then  you 
have  explained  to  me  the  phenomenon  of  such  a  man.  If  he  ad 
vanced  the  cause,  the  cause  also  advanced  him.  No  man  can  devote 
his  life-time  to  the  study  and  advocacy  of  such  principles  as  lie  at 
the  foundation  of  our  Free  Institutions,  without  being  ennobled. 
It  was  what  made  the  giants  of  a  hundred  years  ago.  It  is  what 
has  made  the  giants  of  our  own  time. 

Mr.  WILSON  had  remarkable  native  endowments,  prodigious  en 
ergy,  industry,  and  persistence ;  the  profoundest  conception  of  the 
sacredness  and  value  of  free  institutions  ;  a  prophetic  instinct  as 
to  their  ultimate  triumph ;  but  he  was  all  the  time  breathing  the 
atmosphere  and  under  the  tuition  to  the  principles  of  the  cause 
which  he  advocated;  and  that  gave  a  glow  and  a  glory  to  his 
character  and  his  life,  as  when  the  morning  sun  greets  the  uplifted 
Dome  of  this  structure,  within  which  he  served,  and  where  he  sur 
rendered  his  spirit  back  to  the  God  who  gave  it.  There  is  a  sense 
in  which  it  is  not  irreverent  to  say  that  he  was  inspired  by  that 
cause.  It  was  inspiration  to  him,  that  he  was  permitted  to  fill  up 
that  which  was  behind  in  the  labors  of  those  who  had  gone  before 
him.  This  gave  him  patience  under  provocation ;  a  spirit  of  forgive 
ness  and  forbearance  toward  those  arrayed  against  him;  compos 
ure  and  serenity  alike  in  defeat  and  success.  He  knew  that  the 
cause  was  moving  on,  in  sunshine  and  cloud  ;  whether  in  debate 
upon  this  floor,  whether  upon  the  battle-fields,  where  our  soldiers 
were  using  other  arguments.  He  saw  the  pillar  of  the  cloud  by 
day  and  of  the  fire  by  night,  always  leading  on  the  Hosts  of  Free 
dom  ;  moving  as  they  moved,  pausing  as  they  paused,  never  for 
saking  them. 

It  was  no  after-thought  with  Mr.  WILSON,  it  was  no  measure  of 
political  expediency,  which  led  him  in  1875,  to  travel  over  portions 
of  the  South,  giving  utterance  to  sentiments  of  kindliness  to  those 
who  had  lately  been  in  arms  against  the  nation.  On  the  1st  of 
May,  1862,  when  the  blood  of  Massachusetts  men  had  scarcely 


2  w 


10     THE  DEATH,  FUNERAL  SERVICES,  AND  BURIAL  OF 


driefl  in  the  streets  of  Baltimore,  when  the  guns  which  had  been 
pointed  at  Fort  Sumter,  and  which  had  driven  back  our  forces 
upon  this  city  after  the  first  battle  of  Bull  Run,  were  still  making 
the. ears  of  this  nation  tingle  with  shame,  Mr.  WILSON  had  said 
upon  this  floor,  "After  the  conflict,  when  the  din  of  battle  has 
ceased,  the  humane  and  kindly  and  charitable  feelings  of  the 
country  and  of  the  world  will  require  us  to  deal  gently  with  the 
masses  of  the  people  who  are  engaged  in  the  rebellion."  He  had 
no  hostility  against  men  in  that  conflict.  He  had  hostility  only 
against  that  crime  against  man,  and  that  sin  against  man's 
Creator,  with  which  the  Judge  of  all  the  earth  was  dealing  with 
the  nation  upon  the  battle-field.  And  when  God  had  given  judg 
ment,  he  was  content  5  for  the  enemies  of  his  country  were  also 
men,  and  they  were  not  the  first  of  whom  it  might  be  said, 
"  Father,  forgive  them,  for  they  know  not  what  they  do." 

It  was  natural  that  HENRY  WILSON  should  become  a  Christian, 
the  very  moment  he  gave  his  careful  attention  to  the  claims  of  the 
Lord  Jesus  as  a  Teacher  and  a  Saviour.  It  was  like  him,  when  he 
became  a  Christian,  to  confess  it  before  men.  He  never  sup 
pressed  his  convictions  of  duty.  He  had  never  been  wanting  in 
the  moralities  of  life.  Ho  was  a  pure-minded  husband  and  a 
tender  father;  a  dutiful  son j  a  firm  and  untiring  advocate  of  the 
temperance  cause;  for  many  years  president  of  the  Congressional 
Temperance  Society ;  a  man  strictly  straightforward  and  upright 
in  all  his  dealings  with  men.  But  he  saw  that  neither  upon  the 
basis  of  public  service  nor  of  private  worth,  could  he  stand  before 
Him  with  whom  we  have  to  do.  He  therefore  made  a  public  con 
fession  of  his  repentance  for  sin,  and  faith  in  the  Lord  Jesus,  and 
united  with  the  Congregational  Church  in  Natick. 

Confronted  with  eternity,  .all  men  are  equals;  just  as  some  of 
the  heavenly  bodies  are  so  remote  from  earth  as  to  annihilate 
their  distance  from  each  other.  The  same  truth  which  comforted 
and  re-assured  those  humble,  fishermen  of  Galilee,  soothed  and  sus 
tained  and  cheered  this  dying  statesman  of  the  American  Repub 
lic.  Two  thousand  years  of  earthly  change  and  progress  in  insti 
tutions,  in  customs,  in  manners  have  not  changed  the  heart  of 
man,  have  not  changed  the  eternal  truth  of  God.  It  was  the 
sagacious  instinct,  the  moral  genius  of  Napoleon  I,  which  led  him. 


HENRY  WILSON.  11 


to  say,  "Christ  proved  Himself  to  be  the  Son  of  the  Eternal,  by 
His  disregard  of  time.  All  His  doctrines  signify  one  and  the 
same  thing — Eternity."  And  so  when  any  man,  with  the  instinct 
of  immortality  stirring  within  him,  comes  to  the  verge  where  he 
looks  off  upon  eternity,  when  no  longer  "far  inland,"  but  upon  the 
very  brink — 

His  soul  has  sight  of  that  immortal  sea,  -which  brought  him  hither, 

he  loses  all  his  earthly  peculiarity ;  all  that  which  has  distinguished 
him  from  the  rest  of  his  race — the  elevation  to  which  the  men  of 
his  generation  have  lifted  him;  the  isolation  of  honor  to  which  he 
has  been  consecrated;  the  loneliness  of  the  great — and  becomes 
only,  purely  man  again;  with  the  same  frailties,  the  same  anxieties, 
the  same  affectionate  yearnings  and  tenderness ;  with  the  same 
need  of  a  Divine  Comforter,  as  the  humblest  and  most  unknown 
of  his  fellow-mortals. 

It  cannot  be  said  of  HENRY  WILSON  that  he  died  and  made  no 
sign ;  that  living  in  the  nineteenth  century  which  dates  from  the 
birth  of  the  Lord  Jesus  Christ,  living  when  the  power  of  His  life 
and  death  has  been  felt  by  every  nation  on  the  face  of  the  earth; 
has  gone  into  institutions;  has  gone  into  laws;  has  made  even 
tyranny  and  oppression  endurable ;  has  clothed  the  horrors  of  war 
with  something  of  gentleness  ar.d  humanity;  has  lifted  the  nations 
into  a  kind  of  universal  brotherhood,  so  that  the  chief  rulers  of 
the  earth  have  become  nursing  fathers  and  nursing  mothers  in  His 
kingdom  ;  and  the  prediction  of  the  prophet  that  men  shall  learn 
war  no  more,  seems  less  and  less  like  a  distempered  dream — 1  say 
it  cannot  be  said  of  HENRY  WILSON  that,  living  at  such  a  period, 
he  died  like — 

A  pagan,  suckled  in  a  creed  outworn  ; 

he  died  as  though  life  and  immortality  had  not  been  brought  to 
light  in  the  Gospel.  It  is  no  vain  curiosity  which  makes  a  Chris 
tian  nation  ask  what  its  rulers  think  of  Christ.  Would  that  they 
asked  it  oftener  before  they  selected  them — before  they  came  to  die. 
It  is  only  a  few  days  since — alas!  that  we  are  separated  from  it  as  if 
by  centuries — that  the  first  few  verses  of  the  fourteenth  chapter 
of  John  were  read  at  Mr.  WILSON'S  bedside.  When  the  reading 
reached  the  third  verse:  "And  if  I  go  and  prepare  a  place  for  you, 


12     THE  DEATH,  FUNERAL  SERVICES,  AND  BURIAL  OF 


I  will  come  again  and  receive  you  unto  myself,"  he  interrupted ; 
with  a  kindling  eye  and  a  cheek  aglow,  "What  clearer  revelation,'7 
said  he,  "  could  there  be  of  a  hereafter — of  heaven  as  a  place,  of 
the  continued  personality  of  our  being — of  the  power  to  recognize 
and  to  love  those  whom  we  have  known  in  this  world!  And  how 
could  such  a  Being  as  the  Lord  Jesus  utter  such  words  unless 
they  are  true?  It  is  impossible  to  believe  him  an  imposter.  It 
is  equally  impossible  to  believe  that  he  would  raise  in  us  expecta 
tions  never  to  be  realized."  Of  course  I  do  not  undertake  to  give 
the  exact  language  of  the  remark,  nor  can  I  give  you  any  concep 
tion  of  the  beauty  and  thrilling  power  of  what  he  said.  I  only 
know  this,  that  when  we  rose  from  the  prayer  which  followed,  the 
laces  of  many  of  us  were  bathed  in  tears  And,  when  that  many- 
voiced  monitor,  that  precious  memento  of  his  last  hours,  came  into 
my  hands,  the  volume  kept  under  his  pillow  and  read  and  marked 
at  intervals,  day  and  night,  while  he  knew  not  at  what  hour  his 
Lord  would  come,  and  I*  saw  these  penciled  stanzas: 

The  eye  that  shuts  in  a  dyiug  hour 

Will  open  the  next  in  bliss ; 
The  welcome  will  sound  in  the  heavenly  world 

Ere  the  farewell  is  hushed  in  this; 
We  pass  from  the  clasp  of  mourning  friends 

To  the  arms  of  the  loved  a?jd  lost ; 
And  those  smiling  faces  will  greet  us  there 

Which  on  earth  we've  valued  most ; 

and  when  I  turned  to  the  close  of  the  volume  and  found  pasted 
upon  fly-leaves,  photographs  of  his  sainted  wife  and  his  soldier- 
boy  who  died,  then  I  thought  that  I  understood  the  personal 
application  of  bis  words. 

Mr.  WILSON  at  first  hoped  to  live  ;  expected  to  live.  He  told  me 
the  day  of  his  first  attack,  "  There  is  one  thing  that  I  want  to  finish 
before  I  go."  Without  specifying  it,  I  knew  that  he  referred  to  his 
"  History  of  the  Rise  and  Fall  of  the  Slave-Power  in  America  f 
a  treatise  which  of  itself  is  enough  for  th3  life-work  of  any  single 
man  ;  but  which  he  was  writing  in  his  ease  with  dignity,  as  though 
the  pastime  of  an  invalid.  Did  he  have  premonition  that  his 
expectations  were  to  be  disappointed  ?  Was  it  for  this  reason  that 
the  day  before  his  death  he  was  closeted  for  hours  with  an  inti- 


HENRY  WILSON.  13 


mate  personal  friend  ?  And  did  he  arise  at  midLight,  open  that 
little  volume,  and  read — 

But  after  all  these  duties  I  have  done, 

Must  I,  in  point  of  merit,  them  disown 
And  trust  in  Heaven,  through  Jesus'  blood  alone? 

Through  Jesus'  blood  alone  ? 

thinking  that  perhaps  he  already  heard  the  foot-fall  of  his  com 
ing  Lord:  thinking  of  His  own  words,  "  Watch  ye,  therefore,  for 
ye  know  not  when  the  Master  of  the  house  cometh,  at  even,  or  at 
midnight,  or  at  the  cock  crowing,  or  in  the  morning  ;  lest  coming 
suddenly  he  find  you  sleeping  f 

Having  long  ago  settled  all  questions  relating  to  that  eternity 
to  which  he  was  so  near;  accepting  anew  the  testimony  of  the  In 
fallible  Witness  respecting  it;  tender,  forgiving,  grateful  toward 
man  ;  wondering  at  the  way  in  which  God  had  led  him  ;  his  spirit 
flooded  with  a  kind  of  celestial  summer;  keeping  vigil,  as  it  were, 
upon  the  very  scene  of  his  greatest  services  and  greatest  triumphs ; 
ministered  to  by  the  affectionate  and  faithful  servants  of  the  na 
tion  herself,  as  though  his  sickness  could  be  of  no  private  interpreta 
tion  ;  his  pathway  to  the  tomb,  literally  and  figuratively,  sprinkled 
with  flowers;  the  very  atmosphere  of  the  whole  nation  throbbing 
with  messages  of  solicitude  and  love ;  the  press  giving  united  tes 
timony  to  his  worth,  ay,  winged  to  God  on  the  prayers  of  this 
Christian  nation;  thus  died  HENRY  WILSON,  of  Massachusetts, 
Vice-President  of  the  United  States. 

It  only  remains,  reverently  to  bear  this  sacred  dust  back  to  the 
keeping  of  the  old  Commonwealth  of  Massachusetts :  Mother  of 
statesmen  and  of  men ;  to  soil  consecrated  in  the  beginning  by 
the  ashes  of  the  Pilgrim  Fathers;  to  soil  which  has  already, 
during  the  first  century  of  our  national  life,  gathered  to  itself  the 
dust  of  the  elder  and  later  Adams,  the  dust  of  a  Webster,  an 
Everett,  a  Sumner — names  that  will  never  die !  Into  such  com 
pany,  and  worthy  of  it,  Henry  Wilson  shall  enter  unchallenged.  It 
was  his  to  see  with  unwavering  trust  in  God  and  in  man,  that  which 
the  great  statesman  of  Marshlield  dreaded  so  much  to  look  on  with 
his  dying  eye — one  portion  of  this  Union  in  arms  against  another. 
But  it  was  his  also  to  participate  in  the  extermination  of  that  evil 
which  had  so  taxed  and  defeated  the  ingenuity  and  statesmanship 


14     THE  DEATH,  FUNERAL  SERVICES,  AND  BURIAL  OF 


of  master-minds  before  him.  It  was  his  also  to  assist  in  bringing 
order  out  of  the  chaos  of  civil  war;  in  securing  their  birthright 
to  a  nation  new-born ;  and,  though  passing  through  such  troublous 
times,  it  was  his  crowning  blessing  to  die  in  peace,  with  not  one 
feeling  of  resentment  toward  the  living  or  the  dead. 

Others  may  be  left  to  determine  whether  such  a  man  was  a  great 
man,  and  how  great  he  was;  to  weigh  him  in  scales  and  compre 
hend  him  in  a  balance.  It  is  enough  for  us  to  thank  the  God  of 
our  fathers  that  he  still  raises  up  such  men  ;  men  after  the  old  type 
of  men;  and  to  believe  that  so  long  as  He  is  careful  of  this  type, 
so  long  as  they  continue,  the  Kepublic  will  be  safe.  For  there  is 

Still- 
One  God,  one  law,  one  element, 
And  one  far-off,  divine  event, 
To  which  the  whole  creation  moves. 

And  only  those  men  can  bless  humanity  who,  in  that  movement, 
are  content  to  be  humble  workers  together  with  God! 

Rev.  Dr.  Sunderland  followed  the  funeral  discourse  by  an  im 
pressive  prayer.  He  alluded  to  the  deceased  as  the  humble 
believer,  the  faithful  citizen,  the  earnest  man,  the  patriot,  tbe 
philanthropist,  and  the  Christian.  He  thanked  Divine  Providence 
for  all  that  He  had  enabled  him  to  accomplish,  and  for  that  noble 
perseverance  and  endurance  through  which  he  won  so  many  tri 
umphs.  He  thanked  God  that  the  Vice-President  died  in  faith 
and  hope — that  he  died  in  peace  with  God  and  man — a  child  of 
God,  an  heir-expectant  of  the  coming  resurrection  and  the  glorious 
immortality  of  the  blessed.  He  invoked  the  Divine  blessing  upon 
our  rulers  and  all  others  in  authority  over  us.  He  besought  our 
Heavenly  Father  to  remember  this  nation  whose  heart  is  touched 
with  grief  and  whose  banners  droop  in  sadness.  In  conclusion, 
he  asked  the  Divine  blessing  upon  those  who  would  go  to  bear 
the  sacred  ashes  of  the  dead  to  their  last  repose. 

Eev.  Dr.  Sunderland  then  pronounced  the  benediction. 

The  remains  were  escorted  to  the  railroad-station  by  a  brig 
ade  of  Kegulars  and  volunteers,  commanded  by  Major-General 


HENRY  WILSON.  15 


W.  H.  Emory,  U.  S.  A.,  and  followed  by  a  long  procession,  although 
it  rained.  During  the  passage  of  the  procession  minute-guns  were 
fired,  bells  were  tolled,  and  the  bells  of  the  Metropolitan  Church 
rang  out  funeral  chimes. 

The  governor  of  Massachusetts  having  sent  a  delegation  to 
Washington  to  obtain  the  remains,  they  were  formally  delivered 
to  them  at  the  railroad-station  by  Senator  Thurmau,  who  said: 

"GENTLEMEN  OF  MASSACHUSETTS:  The  funeral  ceremonies  at 
the  National  Capitol  over  the  remains  of  the  late  Vice-President 
are  here  concluded,  and  we  now  deliver  them  to  you  to  convey 
them  to  the  State  of  which  he  was  a  citizen,  and  by  which  he  was 
so  much  honored,  and  which  he  so  well  served.  In  the  performance 
of  your  mournful  duty  you  will  carry  with  you  the  sympathy  of 
the  nation,  and  everywhere  meet  with  sincere  marks  of  respect  for 
the  illustrious  dead." 

Col.  Edward  Wyman,  senior  aid-de-camp  to  Governor  Gaston,  of 
Massachusetts,  said,  in  reply,  that  he  and  those  associated  with  him 
accepted  the  precious  trust  confided  to  them,  and  would  convey  the 
remains  to  Massachusetts,  there  to  receive  all  the  honor  that  love 
and  affection  can  bestow.  He  added  an  expression  of  his  thanks 
for  the  admirable  arrangements  which  had  been  perfected,  and  for 
the  courtesies  extended  to  himself  and  his  colleagues. 

High  honors  were  paid  to  the  remains  of  the  deceased  Vice- 
President  in  Baltimore,  Philadelphia,  New  York,  Boston,  and 
Natick,  where  they  were  interred  on  the  1st  of  December,  1875. 


f L  I  B  R  A  R 

;  UNIVERSITY  OF 

(^CALIFORNIA. 

ADDRESSES 


DEATH  OF  HENRY  WILSON. 


JN  THE  ^ENATE  OF  THE  JJNITED 
FRIDAY,  JANUARY  21,  1876. 


The  Chaplain  of  the  Senate,  Rev.  BYRON  SUNDERLAND, 
D.  D.,  offered  the  following — 


PRAYER. 


Almighty  and  everlasting  God,  the  only  self-immortal, 
who  dwellest  in  light  unapproachable  and  full  of  glory,  we 
bless  and  adore  Thy  name,  and  give  Thee  hearty  thanks. 
Though  we  are  mortal  men  and  have  our  habitation  in 
the  dust,  living  under  inevitable  change,  the  years  rolling 
over  us  so  that  we  sink  into  the  grave,  yet  hast  Thou  for 
us  kindled  amid  this  gloom  the  light  of  hope.  As  Thy 
servants  turn  aside  this  day  to  remember  him  who  so  late 
presided  in  this  Chamber,  we  beseech  Thee  let  the 
heavenly  assurance  fall  upon  them,  as  it  did  upon  him, 
that  Thou  art  their  Father,  Jesus  their  Savior,  the  Holy 


3  w 


LIBRARY 

UNIVKUSITV  OF 

OAI.JFOIt.XIA. 


ADDRESSES 


DEATH  OF  HENRY  WILSON 


JN    THE   J5ENATE    OF   THE    UNITED     STATES, 

FRIDAY,  JANUARY  21,  1876. 


The  Chaplain  of  the  Senate,  Rev.  BYRON  SUNDERLAND, 
D.  D.,  offered  the  following — 

PRAYER. 

Almighty  and  everlasting  God,  the  only  self-immortal, 
who  dwellest  in  light  unapproachable  and  full  of  glory,  we 
bless  and  adore  Thy  name,  and  give  Thee  hearty  thanks. 
Though  we  are  mortal  men  and  have  our  habitation  in 
the  dust,  living  under  inevitable  change,  the  years  rolling 
over  us  so  that  we  sink  into  the  grave,  yet  hast  Thou  for 
us  kindled  amid  this  gloom  the  light  of  hope.  As  Thy 
servants  turn  aside  this  day  to  remember  him  who  so  late 
presided  in  this  Chamber,  we  beseech  Thee  let  the 
heavenly  assurance  fall  upon  them,  as  it  did  upon  him, 
that  Thou  art  their  Father,  Jesus  their  Savior,  the  Holy 


3  w 


18  RESOLUTIONS   OF   RESPECT. 

Ghost  their  sanctifier,  heaven  their  glorious  heritance 
and  lasting  home,  and  all  the  host  of  angels  and  of  the 
general  assembly  and  of  souls  redeemed  the  bright  and 
blessed  company  of  their  association  finally  and  forever. 
Through  Jesus  Christ.  Amen. 

RESOLUTIONS  OF  RESPECT. 

Mr.  BOUTWELL.  Mr.  President,  I  rise  to  present  resolu 
tions  in  honor  of  the  late  Yice-President  of  the  United 
States,  and  to  ask  for  them  immediate  consideration  by 
the  Senate. 

The  PRESIDENT  pro  tempore.  The  resolutions  will  be 
read. 

The  Chief  Clerk  read  the  resolutions,  as  follows : 

Resolved,  That  the  Senate  has  received  with  profound  sorrow 
the  announcement  of  the  death  of  HENRY  WILSON,  late  Vice-Pres- 
ident  of  the  United  States,  and  President  of  the  Senate,  and  who 
had  been  for  eighteen  years  of  consecutive  service  a  member  of 
this  body. 

Resolved,  That  business  be  now  suspended,  that  the  friends  and 
associates  of  the  deceased  may  pay  fitting  tribute  to  his  public  and 
private  virtues. 

Resolved,  That  the  Secretary  communicate  these  resolutions  to 
the  House  of  Eepreseutatives. 

The  resolutions  were  agreed  to  unanimously. 

The  PRESIDENT  pro  tempore.  The  Chair  will  lay  before 
the  Senate  the  tribute  to  the  memory  of  HENRY  WILSON, 
late  Vice-President,  paid  by  American  residents  in  Berlin, 
transmitted  through  the  Secretary  of  State,  which  the 
Secretary  will  now  report. 


RESOLUTIONS  OF  KESPEOT.  19 


The  Chief  Clerk  read  as  follows  : 

At  a  meeting  of  Americans  resident  in  Berlin,  holden  at  the 
American  chapel  on  Thanksgiving  Day,  November  25,  1875,  Mr. 
Nicholas  Fish  in  the  chair,  it  was — 

Resolved  unanimously,  That  we  have  heard  with  most  profound 
sorrow  of  the  death  of  the  Vice-President  of  the  United  States, 
HENRY  WILSON,  and  as  a  tribute  to  his  memory  we  desire  to  re 
cord  our  appreciation  of  the  high  qualities  which  distinguished 
him  as  a  man  and  of  the  eminent  and  faithful  services  which  in  a 
long  public  career  he  has  rendered  the  country  by  his  undeviating 
devotion  to  the  cause  of  the  Union  and  adherence  to  the  great 
principles  of  human  liberty.  That  copies  of  these  resolutions  be 
transmitted  to  the  President  and  to  the  Senate  of  the  United 
States. 
The  committee  on  resolutions : 

H.  KREISMANN,  Chairman. 
WILLIAM  C.  EASTLACK. 
HERM  ROSE. 
Jos.  P.  THOMPSON. 
A.  H.  SYLVESTER. 
To  Hon.  THOMAS  W.  FERRY, 

President  of  the  Senate  of  the  United  States, 

Washington,  D.  C. 


20  ADDRESS  BY  MR.  BOUTWELL  ON  THE 


Address  by    Mr.  jSoutwell,  of   Massachusetts. 


Mr.  President,  it  is  a  satisfaction  which  the  presence  of 
death  even  cannot  extinguish  nor  qualify  that  we  may 
record  the  testimony  which  we  are  disposed  to  give  con 
cerning  the  character  and  virtues  of  those  with  whom  we 
have  been  associated. 

The  late  Vice-President  of  the  United  States  was  a 
member  of  the  Senate  for  the  period  of  eighteen  years, 
and  for  nearly  three  years  he  was  its  Presiding  Officer. 
No  man  was  better  known  to  the  Senate,  and,  of  his  con 
temporaries,  no  one  was  better  known  to  the  country. 
For  more  than  a  third  of  a  century  he  had  been  in  the 
public  service  of  the  State  of  Massachusetts  or  of  the 
United  States.  The  nature  of  his  service  was  always  the 
same.  He  was,  at  various  times  and  by  repeated  elec 
tions,  a  member  of  each  branch  of  the  Legislature  of 
Massachusetts,  and  for  two  years  he  was  the  president  of  its 
Senate.  This  training  was  the  best  preparation  which  our 
system  furnishes  for  service  in  the  legislative  branch  of  the 
National  Government.  In  this  service  and  for  twenty 
years  he  gained  constantly  in  the  good  opinion  of  the 
people  of  the  State  and  of  the  country.  Such  a  career 
was  not  an  accident,  nor  was  it  due  to  what  is  called, 


LIFE  AND  CHARACTER  OF  HENRY  WILSON.  21 

usually,  fortune  or  favoring  circumstances.  Indeed,  there 
was  no  man  of  distinction  among  his  contemporaries  to 
whom  fortune  had  denied  as  much.  His  parentage  was 
honorable,  and  his  ancestry  for  many  generations,  and 
without  interruption  on  either  side,  was  of  New  Hamp 
shire  blood  and  lineage ;  but  they  possessed  neither  wealth 
nor  careful  culture.  The  training  of  a  child  born  into  a 
family  of  wealth  and  high  culture,  without  pretension  or 
pedantry,  is  of  more  value  for  the  affairs  of  the  world 
than  the  education  of  schools  and  colleges. 

Mr.  WILSON  had  not  the  benefits  of  either,  while  many 
of  his  contemporaries  enjoyed  the  advantages  of  cultured 
homes,  cultured  society,  and  the  training  and  discipline 
of  school,  college,  and  university. 

Others  again,  to  whom  these  advantages  were  denied 
as  to  Mr.  WILSON,  were  blessed  with  the  tokens  of  genius, 
distinguishing  them  at  once  from  the  mass  of  men  as 
worthy  of  eminence  and  crowning  them  in  anticipation 
without  apparent  effort  for  themselves. 

Mr.  WILSON  was  not  an  orator;  he  had  not  the  gift  of 
eloquence;  he  had  not  the  power  of  logical  reasoning  so 
as  to  command  the  assent  of  unwilling  hearers,  nor  had 
he  extraordinary  aptitude  for  scholarly  pursuits.  By 
training  and  long-continued  practice  he  became  a  clear, 
self-contained,  convincing  writer  and  speaker.  At  times 
he  was  more  than  this,  and  he  exhibited  occasionally 
something  of  the  power  and  quality  of  the  orator.  His 
strength  was  chiefly,  however,  in  the  depth  and  earnest- 


22  ADDRESS  BY  MB.  BOUTWELL  ON  THE 

ness  of  his  convictions  and  in  his  knowledge  of  the  sub 
jects  that  he  discussed. 

The  denial  to  him  of  the  advantages  of  early  careful 
training,  either  in  his  home  or  in  society  or  in  school,  of 
high  special  gifts  or  unusual  faculties  in  any  of  the  quali 
ties  essential  to  the  successful  orator  or  writer,  forces 
upon  us  the  grave  question,  to  what  special  form  of 
genius,  power  of  nature,  or  accomplishment  of  art  was  he 
indebted  for  the  capacity  for  leadership  in  the  great  moral 
and  political  struggle  of  historical  times?  This  question 
and  its  answer  concern  the  American  people,  who  raised 
him  to  the  rank  of  a  leader  and  trusted,  honored,  and 
sustained  him  as  a  leader,  more  than  they  concern  the 
reputation  or  even  character  of  Mr.  WILSON  as  an  histori 
cal  personage.  First,  he  was  endowed  by  nature  with  an 
heroic  resolution,  which  at  once  urged  him  to  acquire 
knowledge  and  sustained  him  in  his  ceaseless  efforts  to 
accomplish  whatever  he  undertook.  The  ability  to  labor 
was  his  second  great  endowment.  As  he  had  more 
obstacles  to  overcome  than  any  other  man  that  we  have 
known,  so  he  had  more  abundant  means  for  overcoming 
the  obstacles  that  were  in  his  way.  Resolution  to  work 
and  ability  to  work  are  a  substitute  for  everything  except 
genius,  and  often  they  become  even  the  rival  of  genius 
itself.  The  same  restless,  untiring  spirit  that  he  exhib 
ited  among  men  in  the  open  day  upon  questions  and 
topics  of  public  political  concern,  whether  of  peace  or 
war,  animated  him  in  his  efforts  to  overcome  the  defects 


LIFE  AND  CHARACTER  OF  HENRY  WILSON.  23 

of  early  life,  and  finally  to  contribute  to  the  history  of 
the  country  a  faithful  narrative  of  the  great  contest  in 
which  he  had  acted  so  important  a  part. 

But  above  all  and  over  all  as  the  chief  of  his  endow 
ments  was  his  fearless,  conscientious  devotion  to  duty  in 
political  public  affairs.  He  came  into  public  life  as  a 
member  of  the  whig  party,  but  as  the  representative  and 
exponent  of  the  views  and  wishes  of  the  workingmen. 

The  slavery  question  was  soon  forced  upon  us  in  the 
project  for  the  annexation  of  Texas.  The  success  of  that 
project  was  followed  by  other  measures  designed  to 
strengthen,  protect,  or  foster  the  institution  of  slavery. 
To  all  these  schemes  Mr.  WILSON  was  always  and  every 
where  opposed.  He  used  parties,  he  destroyed  parties, 
and  he  organized  parties,  and  all  to  prevent,  first,  the 
spread  of  slavery,  and  then  to  overthrow  it.  From  the 
year  1840,  when  I  first  met  him,  he  was  the  unwavering 
opponent  of  slavery.  If  other  men  made  larger  contribu 
tions  to  the  intellectual  and  moral  forces  engaged  in  the 
war  against  slavery,  he  was  chief  over  all  the  chiefs  in 
the  work  of  combining  and  organizing  those  forces  for  the 
political  contests  of  1850,  1851,  and  1852  in  Massachu 
setts,  and  for  the  national  contests  of  1856  and  1860, 
which  gave  the  welcome  triumph  of  freedom  to  a  slavery- 
accursed  Republic.  His  power  in  this  respect  was  due 
solely  to  his  capacity  to  present  to  others  the  moral  and 
political  considerations  which  ought  to  guide  them. 

As  a  member  of  the  republican  party,  he  was  a  strict 


24  ADDRESS  BY  ME.  BOUTWELL  ON  THE 

party  man.  He  believed  in  its  principles,  respected  its 
opinions,  exulted  in  its  power  for  good,  and  gloried  in  its 
history.  Ambitious  personally,  he  never  allowed  his  pri 
vate  interests  or  wishes  to  interfere  with  the  prospects  of 
his  party.  No  man  yielded  more  readily  to  the  opinions 
of  his  friends  or  subordinated  local  and  personal  claims  to 
the  general  welfare. 

During  the  entire  war  he  occupied  one  of  the  most  im 
portant  posts  in  the  Senate,  and  in  that  post  he  was  first 
of  all  in  the  character  and  value  of  the  services  rendered 
to  the  War  Department  and  to  the  armies  in  the  field. 
When  the  war  ended  he  asked  only  that  those  who  had 
been  in  arms  should  accept  in  good  faith  the  new  Constitu 
tion  and  the  emancipated  bondmen  as  citizens  and  equals 
in  theory  and  in  fact.  If  he  had  not  the  most  prominent 
part  in  amending  the  Constitution  and  in  providing  legal 
means  for  the  reconstruction  of  the  Government,  no  other 
man  did  as  much  to  remove  the  prejudices  of  the  people, 
to  encourage  the  timid,  to  arouse  the  indifferent,  and,  in 
fine,  to  render  those  great  measures  acceptable  to  the 
country.  In  this  protracted  and  weary  work  he  thought 
less  of  himself  than  of  his  party  and  less  of  his  party  than 
of  his  country;  but  he  identified  himself  with  his  party  in 
the  interests  solely  of  his  party,  and  he  vindicated  his 
party  as  the  only  means  of  saving  his  country.  Time 
and  history  will  justify  him  in  these  particulars. 

He  was  a  politician,  a  party  man,  and  a  statesman  as 
well.  Of  the  political  anti-slavery  men  of  this  country 


LIFE  AND  CHARACTER  OF  HENRY  WILSON.  25 

he  is  of  the  first  and  very  small  class,  and  history  may, 
with  justice  to  all,  assign  him  a  leading  place  even  in  that 
small  class.  When  we  consider  the  magnitude  of  the  un 
dertaking  by  which  slavery  was  overthrown,  the  military 
operations  attending  it,  in  which  he  bore  a  conspicuous 
and  honorable  part  in  the  public  councils,  the  difficulties 
that  waited  upon  every  attempt  to  re-organize  the  Gov 
ernment,  which  he  as  much  as  any  other  man  assisted  in 
removing,  and  all  crowned  in  his  own  life  with  full  suc 
cess,  can  his  right  to  be  counted  among  the  statesmen  of 
America  be  denied  ? 

The  preservation  of  this  Government  from  1861  to  1865 
was  a  more  difficult  work  than  the  maintenance  of  the 
Declaration  of  Independence  from  1776  to  1783,  and  its 
re-organization  was  a  more  delicate  task  than  the  forma 
tion  of  the  Constitution  and  the  establishment  of  the 
Union  in  1787  and  1789;  nor  can  I  doubt  that  these 
later  events  will  contribute  more  largely  to  the  welfare  of 
the  human  race. 

While  slavery  existed  our  example  was  shunned  by 
many  who  otherwise  would  have  been  the  advocates  of 
republican  institutions  in  other  countries.  Slavery  has 
disappeared,  and  no  argument  can  be  drawn  from  our 
Constitution,  and  I  trust  that  hereafter  no  argument  will 
be  drawn  from  our  conduct  or  policy,  calculated  to  pre 
vent  the  spread  of  republican  ideas. 

As  men  prefer  truth  to  falsehood,  so  they  will  prefer 
freedom  and  equality  to  authority  and  subserviency,  and 


4  w 


26  ADDRESS  BY  ME.  BOUTWELL  ON  THE 

therefore  we  may  predict  the  spread  of  republican  ideas 
and  the  advance  of  republican  institutions  in  other  lands. 
For  these  results  and  ends  Mr.  WILSON  labored,  and 
these  results  and  ends,  when  realized,  will  be  a  better 
eulogy  upon  his  life,  character,  and  services  than  any  pro 
nounced  in  pulpit  or  Senate. 


LIFE  AND  CHARACTER  OE  HENRY  WILSON.  27 


Address  by    Mr.  Wamlin,  of   Maine. 


Mr.  President,  until  a  very  recent  hour  I  did  not  expect 
to  participate  in  the  proceedings  of  the  Senate  on  this 
occasion,  and  I  rise  now  for  the  purpose  of  seconding  the 
resolutions  submitted  by  the  Senator  from  Massachusetts, 
and  in  a  very  few  words  to  pay  that  personal  tribute  to  the 
memory  of  our  late  Vice- President  of  which  he  and  the 
work  of  his  life  are  so  eminently  worthy. 

In  every  age  and  in  every  country  of  the  world  hom 
age  has  been  paid  to  the  great  and  the  good ;  and  still 
more  appropriately  has  the  custom  obtained  of  paying  a 
just  tribute  to  the  heroic  and  meritorious  dead.  The  chisel 
of  the  sculptor  and  the  pencil  of  the  artist  have  been  in 
voked  to  preserve  their  form  and  features  for  other  times. 

It  is  well,  then,  that  we  pause  amid  the  stirring  scenes 
that  provoke  discussion  and  sometimes  bitterness  in  this 
Hall,  now  shrouded  with  the  drapery  of  mourning,  to  pay 
a  just  and  fitting  testimonial  to  him  who  was  so  long  a 
member  of  this  body  and  so  recently  its  Presiding  Officer. 

HENRY  WILSON,  though  of  obscure  origin,  neither 
learned  nor  eloquent,  will  justly  stand  in  the  history  of  our 
country  as  one  of  its  remarkable  men.  Struggling  under 
all  the  disadvantages  of  obscurity  and  poverty,  and  em 
barrassed  in  a  position  which  would  have  deterred  most 


28  ADDRESS  BY  MR.  HAMLIN   ON  THE 

men,  step  by  step  he  advanced,  until  he  occupied  a  seat 
in  the  Senate,  and  thence  to  the  position  of  its  Presiding 
Officer.  No  ordinary  man  could  achieve  that  result ;  and 
it  furnishes  a  striking  example  which  illustrates  the  the 
ory  of  our  Government,  and  it  should,  nay,  it  will,  afford 
a  stimulus  to  others  in  their  exertions  for  worthy  and  hon 
orable  advancement. 

I  became  acquainted  with  Mr.  WILSON  when  he  took 
his  seat  in  the  Senate  in  February,  1855.  I  had  known 
of  him  as  a  public  man  whom  the  State  of  Massachusetts 
had  honored  before  that  time,  but  I  had  not  made  his 
acquaintance  personally  until  he  came  to  be  a  Senator ; 
and  from  that  time  until  his  decease  our  relations  were  of 
the  most  intimate  character. 

In  running  my  eye  over  this  body  I  find  no  Senator 
save  myself  who  then  occupied  a  seat  on  this  floor. 

What  shadows  we  are,  and  what  shadows  we  pursue ! 

It  was  one  of  the  last  statements  made  by  the  late  Vice- 
President  that  more  than  eighty  Senators  with  whom  he 
had  served  had  preceded  him  in  death ;  and  for  the  im 
pressive  lesson  which  it  teaches  us  I  may,  perhaps,  be 
excused  for  saying  that  during  the  time  that  I  have  been 
connected  with  the  Senate  as  a  Senator  and  its  Presiding 
Officer,  more  than  one  hundred  and  thirty  persons  with 
whom  I  have  served  and  associated  officially  and  person 
ally  as  Senators  have  passed  from  earth. 

Here  Mr.  WILSON  won  the  respect  of  all,  and  by  his 
zeal  and  industry  succeeded  in  establishing  the  reputation 


LIFE  AND  CHARACTER  OF  HENRY  WILSON.  29 

of  a  wise  and  able  statesman.  Statesman  he  may  be 
called.  It  is  statesmanship  that  achieves  results  which 
promote  the  best  interests  of  the  country,  and  that  Mr. 
WILSON  did.  During  the  dark  hours  of  the  war,  as  chair 
man  of  the  Military  Committee,  his  services  were  invalu 
able  in  preparing  and  carrying  through  the  Senate  all 
measures  for  raising,  equipping,  and  marshaling  our 
armies  in  the  field.  He  was  quick  to  see  the  wants  of  the 
Government,  and  always  prompt  and  ready  to  supply  the 
remedy.  The  people  of  our  country  can  hardly  appreci 
ate  how  much  they  are  indebted  to  him  for  the  faithful 
performance  of  the  onerous  duties  that  then  devolved 
upon  him,  nor  have  I  a  doubt  that  the  cause  of  that  dis 
ease  to  which  his  strong  frame  at  last  surrendered  can  be 
traced  to  his  excessive  labors  at  that  time.  Of  the  valu 
able  services  rendered  by  Senator  WILSON  during  the 
short  session  of  1861,  General  Scott  paid  him  the  high 
compliment  of  saying,  "  He  had  done  more  work  in  that 
short  session  than  all  the  chairmen  of  the  Military  Com 
mittee  had  done  for  the  last  twenty  years."  It  may  with 
equal  truth  be  said  that  his  labors  of  that  session  were 
only  a  true  index  of  subsequent  and  continued  industry 
to  the  end.  In  the  energy  and  untiring  diligence  with 
which  he  discharged  every  duty  devolving  upon  him  he 
had  no  superior  in  this  body.  To  do  right  as  he  saw  the 
right  was  his  rule  of  action.  Inured  to  toil  from  early 
life,  to  poverty,  and  to  privation,  he  was  a  most  fitting  rep 
resentative  of  the  State  which  he  honored  in  his  position ; 


30  ADDRESS  BY  MR.  HAMLIN  ON  THE 

and  it  often  occurred  to  me  during  the  long  years  through 
which  he  held  a  seat  here  his  State  was  most  appropriately 
represented  in  her  two  Senators,  the  one  of  its  labor  and 
the  other  of  its  learning.  His  life  was  devoted  to  the 
welfare  and  elevation  of  our  people,  morally,  socially, 
and  politically.  His  able  vindication  of  the  free  laborers 
of  the  country  when  they  were  assailed  and  stigmatized 
as  the  mud-sills  of  society  demonstrates  his  sympathy 
with  those  who  toiled,  and  upon  whose  work  rested  the 
prosperity  of  the  country  and  by  which  alone  can  its 
permanency  be  maintained. 

During  his  whole  life  he  was  an  earnest  and  consistent 
advocate  of  temperance,  which  he  made  evident  in  his 
practical  life,  and  was  for  several  years  president  of  the 
Congressional  Temperance  Society.  The  knowledge  of 
the  good  works  by  him  accomplished  in  this  noble  cause 
extends  far  beyond  the  limits  of  our  country. 

The  grand  work  of  his  life  is  to  be  found  in  his  long 
and  persistent  efforts  to  break  the  shackles  of  the  slave 
and  let  the  oppressed  go  free.  In  the  providence  of  God 
he  lived  to  see  the  mighty  work  fulfilled;  and  for  his  efforts 
to  this  end,  and  in  behalf  of  all  the  great  measures  to  pre 
serve  the  life  of  the  nation,  his  name  will  be  recorded  in 
imperishable  history,  while  millions  will  cherish  his 
memory.  He  was  a  Christian  gentleman,  and  his  life  wras 
adorned  by  Christian  virtues,  and  in  honesty  and  integ 
rity,  even  in  times  like  these,  he  stood  unassailed  and 
unassailable. 

An  honest  man's  the  noblest  work  of  God. 


LIFE  AND  CHARACTER  OF  HENRY  WILSON.  31 


Address  by    Mr.    Cragin,  of  New  Wampshrc?./.  /,  , 


Mr.  President,  the  emblems  of  mourning  that  darken 
this  Chamber,  and  all  the  public  buildings  in  this  capital 
city,  have  reminded  us  for  more  than  a  month  past  that  a 
man  in  high  position,  and  one  greatly  loved  by  the  people, 
has  departed.  One  who  had  occupied  a  seat  on  this  floor 
for  more  than  twenty  years  as  Senator  and  Vice-President 
was  not  here  on  the  opening  day  of  this  session.  He 
came  here  after  the  leaves  had  fallen,  and  a  few  weeks  in 
advance  of  some  of  us,  to  be  ready  to  enter  anew  upon 
his  duties  ;  but  the  invisible  angel  of  death  came  into  this 
Capitol  with  him,  and  laying  a  cold  hand  upon  the  Vice- 
President  claimed  him  for  the  grave.  A  struggle  of  a  few 
days'  duration  went  on  in  a  room  near  by  this  Chamber, 
and  hope  tantalized  us  all,  but  the  insatiate  conqueror  who 
never  knew  defeat  prevailed,  and  our  friend  was  numbered 
with  the  dead.  The  form  so  long  familiar  to  many  of  us 
is  no  longer  seen  among  men  ;  the  voice  that  has  so  often 
echoed  along  these  gilded  walls  in  earnest  and  eloquent 
tones  of  protest  against  wrong,  and  of  sympathy  for  the 
lowly  and  oppressed,  is  hushed  forever.  HENRY  WILSON 
is  dead  !  And  we  set  apart  this  day  to  crown  his  memory, 
and  to  honor  his  character  and  services.  What  has  hap 
pened  to  him  is  no  uncommon  thing,  but  rather  the  certain 


32  ADDRESS  BY  MR.  CRAGIN  ON  THE 

and  common  lot  of  all  mankind.     The  dead  many  times 
outnumber  the  living,  and  the  living  must  all  die. 

More  than  eighteen  hundred  years  ago  St.  John 
described  a  great  multitude  of  dead,  "which  no  man 
could  number."  Tens  of  millions  have  been  added  every 
year  since,  till  the  imagination  staggers  in  the  attempt  to 
comprehend  the  vast  and  constantly-increasing  number 
who  sleep  in  the  valley  of  death. 

The  battle  of  our  life  is  brief, 
The  alarm,  the  struggle,  the  relief; 
Then  sleep  we  side  by  side. 

My  acquaintance  with  Mr.  WILSON  began  more  than 
twenty  years  ago,  and  I  soon  learned  to  respect  and  admire 
him  for  his  many  good  qualities,  both  of  head  and  heart. 
He  was  a  good  man,  in  that  he  cherished  love  for  all  man 
kind  and  always  obeyed  the  impulses  of  a  kind  and  gen 
erous  nature.  He  was  not  a  great  man  in  shining  qualities, 
but  he  was  great  in  real,  solid  qualities.  He  was  great  in 
honest,  earnest  purpose ;  in  sagacity,  in  practical  knowl 
edge,  and  common  sense.  He  was  powerful  in  the  advo 
cacy  of  truth  and  the  rights  of  the  people.  He  was  a 
humane,  sincere  man,  always  leaning  to  the  side  of  the 
weak  and  friendless.  He  always  espoused  the  cause  of 
the  masses,  and  labored  faithfully  and  earnestly  for  every 
thing  that  tended  to  elevate  the  character  and  better  the 
condition  of  his  fellow-men.  He  instinctively  scorned  a 
mean  action,  and  the  man  is  not  living  or  dead  whom  he 
ever  intentionally  wronged.  A  man's  character,  physical, 
mental,  and  moral,  is  molded  largely  by  the  climate,  occu- 


LITE  AND  CHARACTER  OP  HENRY  WILSON.  33 

pation,  society,  and  other  circumstances  of  his  early  life. 
Our  lamented  friend  was  born  in  the  obscure  and  humble 
walks  of  life,  and  his  pathway  through  childhood  and 
youth  was  one  of  extreme  poverty  and  toil.  He  learned 
by  bitter  experience  the  trials  and  wants  of  the  poor,  and 
to  the  day  of  his  death  he  was  the  true  and  trusted  friend 
of  the  people.  He  labored  with  the  farmer  in  tilling  the 
soil,  and  with  the  mechanic  in  the  workshop,  and  here  he 
became  learned  in  common  things  and  laid  the  foundation 
for  that  wonderful  common  sense  for  which  he  was  distin 
guished. 

We  have  seen  him  here  many  years  with  a  learned  col 
league  whose  mind  was  trained  and  filled  with  the  thoughts 
of  other  men,  and  yet  in  practical  ability  and  common  wis 
dom,  which  comes  to  minds  attentive  to  their  own  thoughts, 
he  was  more  than  the  equal  of  Charles  Sumner.  His  early 
life  was  not  wholly  given  to  physical  toil ;  his  young  mind 
was  hungry  for  intellectual  food,  and  found  it  to  some  ex 
tent.  A  good  friend  loaned  him  books,  and  he  read  many 
after  daylight  had  faded  into  night.  But,  after  all,  the 
great  book  from  which  he  learned  most  was  the  book  of 
nature — a  book  full  of  all  knowledge,  and  one  that  no 
man  has  or  ever  can  fully  read  or  understand.  This  book 
is  the  work  of  the  Infinite  Author  of  creation,  and  is  the 
fountain  from  which  finite  men  gather  materials  for  books 
and  inspirations  for  thoughts.  It  is  filled  with  the  choicest 
poetry,  music,  prose,  and  the  demonstration  of  all  science 
and  art.  It  is  accessible  alike  to  the  rich  and  poor,  and 


5  w 


34  ADDRESS  BY  MR.  CRAGIN  ON  THE 

especially  to  the  poor,  and  is  to  be  found  wide  open  in 
the  field,  in  the  forest,  in  the  workshop,  in  the  moving 
waters,  in  the  singing  of  birds,  in  the  habits  of  animals 
and  the  speech  of  men,  in  the  earth  below  and  the  starry 
heavens  above.  Its  language  is  universal,  and  he  who 
can  read  it  well  and  take  in  its  great  truths  is  not  only  a 
learned  man  but  a  Christian. 

In  after  life  and  through  his  long  public  career  Mr.  WIL 
SON  was  a  student.  He  read  and  studied  books,  mostly 
of  a  practical  kind,  and  closely  observed  men  and  things. 
He  read  less  of  poetry  and  fiction  and  more  of  history 
and  biography.  He  was  specially  familiar  with  the  history 
of  all  great  struggles  for  freedom  and  human  rights  in 
modern  times,  and  became  a  prominent  actor  in  the  con 
test  that  resulted  in  giving  freedom  to  four  million  slaves 
and  placing  them  upon  the  high  plane  of  American  citizen 
ship.  He  was  emphatically  a  self-made  man,  and,  like 
most  men  who  have  come  up  under  adverse  circumstances, 
and  to  whom  God  has  given  great  powers,  he  was  a  strong 
man.  He  was  strong  in  simplicity,  strong  in  sincerity, 
strong  in  purity,  and  strong  in  earnestness.  He  was  clear 
in  his  convictions,  and  bold  and  effective  in  maintaining 
them. 

He  was  not  an  orator  in  the  common  understanding  of 
that  term,  but  he  was  a  very  able  public  speaker.  He 
had  the  power  to  hold  the  attention  of  his  hearers,  and  to 
carry  conviction  to  their  heads  and  hearts.  This  is  the 
purpose  and  effect  of  true  eloquence.  He  made  many 


LIFE  AND  CHARACTER  OF  HENRY  WILSON.  35 

political  speeches,  and  always  with  great  effect.  He 
never  soared  in  imagination  up  among  the  stars  to  get  lost 
in  the  "  milky  way,"  or  strangled  or  bewildered  his  hearers 
in  sentences  a  mile  long.  He  spoke  to  the  common 
understanding.  He  carried  conviction  by  conviction.  He 
pleased  by  his  candor  and  truthfulness  even  those  who 
differed  from  him  in  opinion.  He  built  upon  facts,  and 
the  structure  stood  after  the  sound  of  his  voice  had  ceased. 
He  interested  his  hearers  by  the  honest  utterance  and 
honest  faith  of  an  honest  man.  He  believed  what  he  said, 
and  a  zeal  which  only  comes  from  devotion  to  truth  kindled 
corresponding  fires  in  the  hearts  of  his  hearers.  His  purity 
of  character  was  a  great  element  of  his  strength.  He 
wore  no  garment  to  conceal  a  deformity,  but  he  was  sim 
ple,  plain,  and  honest  in  his  every-day  life.  He  was  em 
phatically  one  of  the  people,  and  he  studied  the  wishes, 
the  interests,  and  the  condition  of  the  toiling  millions  with 
a  heart  always  in  accord  with  them  and  with  an  honest 
purpose  to  serve  them.  He  knew  their  mode  of  reasoning 
and  their  wants  with  wonderful  accuracy ;  he  therefore 
became  one  of  the  best  judges  of  popular  feeling  and 
popular  demand  in  this  country. 

It  is  inevitable  that  such  a  man  should  become  a  favorite 
of  the  people.  They  honored,  loved,  and  trusted  him.  I 
never  realized  this  so  fully  as  when  his  dead  body  recently 
passed  through  the  city  of  New  York  on  its  way  to  Massa 
chusetts.  I  rode  in  the  funeral  procession  from  Jersey 
City  to  Madison  Square,  a  distance  of  several  miles,  and 


36  ADDRESS  BY  MR.   CRAGIN  ON  THE 

the  sidewalks  on  each  side  of  Broadway  and  all  the  streets 
leading  into  that  great  thoroughfare,  the  steps,  balconies, 
windows,  and  roofs  of  buildings  along  the  whole  line, 
were  densely  packed  with  people.  The  procession  was 
late  in  starting,  and  many  thousands  had  stood  for  an  hour 
in  the  cold  to  see  the  body  of  the  people's  friend  pass.  I 
never  before  saw  any  sight  like  it,  and  it  was  proof  of 
the  affection  and  confidence  of  the  people  which  could 
not  be  mistaken.  It  was  estimated  that  more  than  two 
hundred  thousand  men,  women,  and  children  witnessed 
the  grand  and  solemn  ceremony.  It  was  agreed  on  all 
hands  that  nothing  like  this  outpouring  of  the  people  had 
been  seen  in  that  city  since  the  body  of  the  lamented  and 
immortal  Lincoln  passed  to  its  final  resting-place. 

HENRY  WILSON  was  a  native  of  New  Hampshire,  and 
her  people  were  ever  proud  of  him.  I  mingle  my  own 
personal  grief  with  theirs  on  this  solemn  occasion,  and  de 
plore  the  loss  not  only  of  his  native  State  but  of  the  whole 
nation  in  the  death  of  this  great  and  good  man.  I  com 
mend  his  character  and  noble  example  to  the  young  men 
of  my  own  and  other  States,  in  the  hope  that  the  Republic 
may  long  live  through  the  intelligence  of  the  people  and 
a  like  patriotism,  ability,  and  purity  of  its  public  men. 

Within  a  little  more  than  three  years  four  natives  of 
New  Hampshire  who  have  made  honorable  places  for  them 
selves  in  history  have  obeyed  the  summons  which  no  man 
can  resist,  and  gone  the  way  of  all  the  earth.  The  first 
in  order  of  time  was  Horace  Greeley,  the  great  journalist. 


LIFE  AND   CHARACTER   OF   HENRY  WILSON.  37 

He  never  held  any  high  official  position,  except  a  seat  in 
the  House  of  Representatives  for  a  short  time,  but  for  a 
long  time  he  was  the  head  of  the  leading  newspaper  of 
the  land,  and  wielded  a  power  and  influence  unequaled 
by  that  of  any  other  man  on  the  continent.  His  head  and 
heart  were  both  large,  and  the  world  is  much  better  f6r 
his  having  lived.  Then  Salmon  P.  Chase,  Senator,  gov 
ernor,  Secretary  of  the  Treasury,  and  Chief-Justice  of 
the  United  States,  passed  to  his  final  home.  His  was  an 
honorable  career,  and  history  will  record  his  great  deeds. 
Next  fell  John  P.  Hale,  my  immediate  predecessor  in  this 
body.  For  sixteen  years  he  was  a  member  of  the  Senate, 
and  displayed  great  powers  of  genius.  I  have  not  for 
gotten,  and  the  country  will  never  forget,  the  time  when 
he  stood  here,  with  Sumner,  Seward,  Chase,  Wade,  WIL 
SON,  Collamer,  and  Foot,  all  champions  of  a  great  cause, 
the  cause  of  liberty  and  human  rights.  The  last  of  the 
four  to  depart  was  HENRY  WILSON,  the  late  Vice-President, 
whom  we  honor  and  mourn  to-day.  No  State  can  point 
to  four  nobler,  purer,  abler  men  who  have  served  their 
country  longer  or  better. 

Of  all  the  Senators  who  occupied  seats  in  this  Chamber 
when  I  first  entered  here  as  a  member,  only  five,  including 
myself,  remain.  Two  others  who  had  been  Senators  be 
fore  that  time  soon  returned  again  and  are  now  members. 

Since  the  4th  of  March,  1865,  I  have  served  with  one 
hundred  and  sixty-nine  different  Senators — ninety-eight 
of  them  are  no  longer  here — and  I  recall  twenty-five  who 


38  ADDRESS  BY  ME.  CRAGEST  ON  THE 

have  passed  over  the  dark  stream  of  death.  Such  have 
been  the  changes  in  the  membership  of  this  body,  and 
such  the  work  of  death  among  those  who  were  or  had  been 
members,  in  ten  short  years. 

Every  seventh  man  has  closed  his  earthly  record.  So 
it  has  been,  and  so  it  must  always  be. 

Ever  since  the  world  began  the  lessons  of  death  have 
been  taught.  Man  is  here  to-day  and  gone  to-morrow. 

Our  brief  journey  here  ends  in  the  tomb,  but  faith  points 
to  eternal  life  beyond. 

Art  is  long,  and  Time  is  fleeting, 
And  our  hearts,  though  stout  and  brave, 

Still,  like  muffled  drums,  are  beating 
Funeral  marches  to  the  grave. 


LIFE  AND  CHARACTER  OF  HENRY  WILSON.  39 


Address  by    Mr.    Cameron,  of  Pennsylvania. 


Mr.  President,  the  memory  of  a  man  dying  in  posses 
sion  of  a  great  place,  endowed  with  high  mental  force, 
true  to  his  convictions  of  right,  and  earnest  in  the  discharge 
of  duty,  is  a  study  which  always  commands  respect  and 
honor;  and  such  a  man  was  the  late  Vice-President.  Of 
his  devotion  to  his  principles  it  may  be  truthfully  said  that 
this  began  at  a  period,  and  was  displayed  on  a  theater, 
where  it  required  more  than  ordinary  enthusiasm  to  keep 
the  devotee  unfaltering,  and  more  than  the  average  courage 
to  keep  him  firm.  But  in  his  long  pubh'c  career  no  evi 
dence  occurs  to  insinuate  that  HENRY  WILSON  lacked  either 
the  enthusiasm  or  the  courage  for  his  work;  and  that  is 
saying  much.  But  that  which  makes  his  pathway  in  life 
most  interesting  to  me  is  the  humbleness  of  his  origin,  the 
energy  he  displayed  in  raising  himself  to  a  higher  level 
of  life,  and  the  blessed  surroundings  which  enabled  the 
poor,  unfriended,  but  ambitious  lad  to  mount  from  his 
native  obscurity  to  the  second  place  in  the  civil  magistracy 
of  a  republic  of  forty  millions  of  free,  enlightened,  and 
discriminating  people.  Of  the  earlier  struggles  and  the 
cruel  sufferings  of  his  youth  those  who  know  intimately 
their  particulars  have  spoken,  and  it  is  an  important  matter. 

My  knowledge  of  the  dead  Vice-President  began  after 


4:0  ADDRESS  BY  MR.  CAMERON  ON  THE 

all  these  had  been  successfully  overcome  and  passed. 
And  I  speak  only  of  the  acts  of  his  vigorous  prime  and 
his  public  life.  In  the  hotly-contested  slavery  agitation 
he  was  known,  not  as  the  earliest  champion  of  universal 
freedom,  but  as  the  product  of  that  determined  polemical 
war  that  surged  about  him  in  his  youth.  His  political  bonds 
and  party  predilections  were  not  strong  enough  to  keep 
the  natural  enthusiasm  of  the  young  man  in  leading- 
strings;  for,  breaking  away  from  these,  he  followed  the 
dictates  of  his  conscience  rather  than  the  teachings  of  mere 
political  leaders.  And  so  he  came  to  this  Senate  the  un 
compromising  representative  of  a  cause  many — perhaps  a 
majority — of  his  supporters  did  not  consider  of  primary 
importance  at  the  time  they  concentrated  their  votes  to 
send  him  to  Washington.  Like  his  great  colleague,  he 
was  chosen  a  Senator  because  the  moving  forces  of  that 
avalanche  both  did  so  much  to  precipitate  had  already 
divided  the  minds  of  men  in  both  the  old  political  parties 
in  New  England,  so  that  neither  could  concentrate  on  men 
who  opposed  or  ignored  free-soil  and  its  consequence,  the 
abolition  of  slavery.  Whether  the  coalition  that  sent 
HENRY  WILSON  to  the  Senate  knew  precisely  what  sort 
of  man  they  were  choosing,  I  cannot  tell.  But  if  they 
did  not,  then  they  builded  wiser  than  they  knew.  He 
entered  into  the  war  of  opinions  like  a  true  knight,  and 
fought  gallantly  and  faithfully. 

As  time  wore  on  the  great  issue  came  to  a  head.     The 
civil  war  broke  on  the  land,  and  all  political  barriers  were 


LIFE  AND  CHARACTER  OF  HENRY  WILSON.  41 

broken  down  for  a  time.  Called  on  to  take  a  somewhat 
active  part  in  that  tremendous  struggle,  I  found  it  a  matter 
of  profound  interest  to  study  the  characters  of  the  public 
men  on  whose  fortitude  and  steady  devotion  the  successful 
prosecution  of  the  war  for  the  Union  depended;  for  by 
the  laws  of  Congress,  passed  to  strengthen  the  hands  of 
the  Administration,  only  could  the  Administration  act. 
And  in  that  anxious  penetration  to  discover  uncompromis 
ing  supporters,  the  late  Vice-President  was  quickly  set 
down  as  one  in  whom  there  was  "no  shadow  of  turning." 
In  every  measure  designed  to  bring  back  peace  by  the  only 
methods  then  possible  to  us,  Mr.  WILSON  upheld  the  execu 
tive  authority  with  an  eager  industry  which  left  him  no 
time  for  criticism  or  carping. 

The  first  reverse  to  our  arms  caused  many  to  pause,  and 
some  to  doubt  and  fear.  The  answer  from  HENRY  WILSON 
to  that  disaster  was  a  request  by  him  to  the  then  Secretary 
of  War  for  authority  to  raise  a  regiment  for  three  years. 
This  was  eagerly  given.  And  in  a  very  brief  time  a 
splendid  body  of  men  came  marching  along  Pennsylvania 
avenue,  as  thoroughly  armed  and  equipped  as  any  regi 
ment  the  world  ever  saw.  His  influence,  seconded  by 
the  tireless  energy  of  Governor  John  A.  Andrew,  supplied 
this  excellent  force;  and  then  the  colonel  laid  down  his 
commission  to  resume  his  seat  in  the  Senate,  where  his 
best  services  could  be  given  to  the  country,  leaving  his 
second  officer  to  lead  the  regiment  in  the  field — a  work 
for  which  he  was  especially  fitted  and  carefully  chosen. 


6  w 


42  ADDRESS  BY  ME.  CAMERON  ON  THE 

What  followed  is  a  part  of  the  history  of  the  nation  HENRY 
WILSON  so  steadfastly  loved.  His  patriotic  constituents 
again  returned  him  to  this  body.  And  then  the  country 
demanded  of  Massachusetts  the  son  she  had  delighted  to 
honor,  that  he  might  be  yet  further  exalted.  The  grateful 
Republic  placed  him  at  the  head  of  the  body  in  which  his 
life  had  been  so  useful  and  so  honorable.  And  now  we 
turn  aside  from  the  cares  and  duties  of  the  hour  to  record, 
however  feebly  and  imperfectly,  our  tributes  to  his  patri 
otism,  his  devotion,  his  courage,  and  his  purity.  The 
patriot  has  gone  to  his  reward,  and  we  may  gather  lessons 
of  wisdom  from  his  successful  and  useful  life. 


LIFE  AND  CHARACTER  OF  HENRY  WILSON.  43 


Address  by    Mr.    Merrill,  of  Vermont. 


Mr.  President,  HENKY  WILSON  was  early  removed  from 
parental  guidance,  but  he  fortunately  possessed  a  resolute 
will  and  a  sober  sense  of  duty,  which  led  to  the  pursuit 
of  that  course  of  life  which  to  him,  bound  to  hard  labor, 
seemed  best,  and  which  promised  the  most  advantages  to 
the  growth  of  a  young  man  whose  habits  had  not  been 
rooted  in  the  precious  memories  of  home  example,  and 
whose  culture,  in  the  land  of  schools,  had  been  conspicu 
ously  omitted.  His  curiosity  for  reading  appears  to  have 
been  very  early  aroused  and  to  some  extent  gratified, 
though  in  a  desultory  manner.  The  story  of  man  in  all 
ages,  of  peace  and  war,  of  liberty  and  despotism,  of  civ 
ilization  and  barbarism,  and  of  his  own  relations  to  his 
Maker  and  to  his  fellow-men,  engaged  his  attention,  and 
thus,  while  yet  in  obscurity,  he  laid  the  foundations  for 
leadership  among  men  upon  the  broad  principles  of  dem 
ocratic  equality  and  upon  the  living  sentiment  of  universal 
human  liberty,  which  subsequently  won  for  him  national 
renown. 

The  late  Vice-President  belonged  to  the  class  of  men 
most  commonly  described  as  self-educated,  which,  in  this 
instance,  as  in  many  others,  means  that  he  had  been 
endowed  by  nature  with  something  more  than  a  moderate 


44     ADDRESS  BY  ME.  MORRILL,  OF  VERMONT,  ON  THE 

share  of  brain-power,  energetically  supported  by  bone  and 
muscle,  but  had  received  in  his  youth  little  or  no  artificial 
aid  from  schools.  Of  this  outfit,  however,  he  wasted 
nothing.  Shunning  no  labor,  his  stock  of  useful  infor 
mation  was  ever  increasing.  It  is  no  slender  encomium 
upon  HENRY  WILSON  that,  as  the  successor  here  of  the 
most  classic  orator  of  New  England,  of  one  who  might 
have  been  called  the  finished  product  of  culture  and 
learning,  he  filled  the  place  of  Senator  so  well  that  he  was 
never  humiliated  by  unfavorable  comparisons;  and,  what 
ever  his  deficiencies  of  scholastic  learning  may  have  been, 
his  merits  as  a  man  and  Senator  were  so  plainly  to  be  seen 
that  Massachusetts,  not  without  other  ambitious  resources, 
four  times  returned  him  to  this  body  as  the  right  man  in 
the  right  place.  With  a  long  term  still  before  him  here, 
at  the  command  of  the  nation  he  took  the  higher  seat  of 
Vice-President. 

HENRY  WILSON  loved  his  whole  race,  and  served  the 
race  next  to  his  God.  He  sought  their  acquaintance — 
their  approbation — and,  when  elevated  himself  to  high 
positions,  gladly  mixed  with  common  people,  opening  to 
them  a  great  heart  full  of  sympathy,  and  they  admired 
and  loved  him  in  return.  Rising  from  the  mechanic's 
bench,  and  as  much  as  St.  Paul  the  master  of  a  trade,  he 
respected  labor,  and  laborers  first  saluted  him  with  honors. 
He  spoke  to  them  and  for  them,  and  they  were  proud  of 
him.  If  he  exalted  their  destiny,  he  did  not  refrain  from 
exposing  their  faults.  If  they  were  intemperate,  he 


LIFE  AND  CHARACTER  OF  HENRY  WILSON.  45 

denounced  not  them,  but  intemperance.  If  they  were 
idle,  he  set  them  an  example  of  unflagging  industry.  If 
they  were  laboring  for  stinted  wages,  he  urged  employers 
to  a  more  equitable  division  of  profits.  If  they  were 
illiterate,  he  showed  how  some  knowledge  could  be  gained 
by  the  evening  blaze  of  tallow  candles  and  by  the  light 
which  breaks  through  the  crevices  of  the  early  morning. 
When  he  lashed  slavery,  he  had  at  the  same  time  pity  for 
the  slave-holder  as  well  as  the  slave.  When  he  lauded 
freedom,  he  failed  not  to  count  the  cost,  and  knew  that  it 
could  only  be  sustained  by  an  increased  demand  on  the 
virtue  and  intelligence  of  both  rulers  and  people. 

In  his  speeches  he  never  was  betrayed  into  any  ambi 
tious  use  of  language,  and  seldom  decorated  anything 
with  borrowed  scraps.  It  was  enough  if  he  was  squarely 
understood;  but  he  was  ambitious  to  set  forth  such  facts 
as  would  surely  find  a  lodgment  in  the  hearts  of  his 
hearers,  and  he  never  grew  weary  in  the  utterance  of 
generous  sentiments  in  behalf  of  the  poor  and  lowly. 

In  politics  he  belonged  to  the  party  of  movement,  and 
believed  nothing  politically  right  which  to  him  seemed 
morally  wrong,  or  that  was  susceptible  of  improvement. 
He  would  have  men  in  high  places  teach  by  example. 
His  patriotism  was  of  the  broadest  character  and  always 
ablaze,  and  for  those  who  had  served  their  country  as 
soldiers  or  sailors  there  were  no  wages  too  high,  no  pen 
sions  not  earned,  and  no  bounties  undeserved. 

HENRY   WILSON  was  not  a  philosopher  thoughtfully 


46  ADDRESS  BY  MR.  MORRILL,   OF  VERMONT,   ON  THE 

guided  by  profound  research  and  unyielding  logic,  nor  a 
wit  who  surprised  and  captivated  his  hearers  with  brilliant 
thoughts,  nor  was  he  eminent  in  any  special  branch  of 
knowledge,  and  it  cost  him  very  little  to  change  his 
opinion  in  matters  of  mere  expediency  if  he  found  himself 
in  error,  or  if  he  found  later  and  better  supports  for  a  dif 
ferent  opinion;  but  when  once  fully  identified  with  any 
measure  of  principle,  or  with  any  matter  that  touched  the 
tender  sensibilities  of  his  heart,  he  never  deserted  it,  and 
had  all  the  courage  required  to  lead  even  a  forlorn  hope. 
If  he  was  incapable  of  great  essays  on  great  subjects,  he 
never  lacked  enthusiasm  in  a  great  cause,  nor  the  will  in 
such  a  cause  to  offer  himself  as  "the  man  of  all  work," 
and  he  came  to  the  front  in  shaping  and  pushing  forward 
events.  He  was  not  only  the  earnest  adherent  of  all 
measures  for  the  advancement  of  the  welfare  of  mankind, 
but  he  made  his  earnestness  contagious.  He  was  for 
thirty-five  years  conversant  with  public  men  and  public 
affairs,  and  this  gave  elevation  to  his  character  and  dig 
nity  to  his  career.  He  quickly  fathomed  the  general 
sentiment  of  the  public,  and  knew  how  to  organize  suc 
cess.  Officially  he  hardly  aspired  to  be  great,  or  to  shine 
in  the  routine  discharge  of  his  duties,  but  as  ever-stirring 
HENEY  WILSON  he  was  great;  great  in  his  confiding  sim 
plicity,  his  homespun  integrity,  his  unbounded  love  of 
country,  and  his  knowledge  of  men  and  their  opinions. 
True,  he  sought  office,  but  not  for  its  trappings  and  emol 
uments;  he  sought  it  because  he  honestly  believed,  with 


LIFE  AND   CHARACTER  OF  HENRY  WILSON.  47 

the  leverage  of  power  to  be  obtained,  he  could  be  useful 
to  his  country,  and  seldom  has  the  country  been  called  to 
mourn  the  loss  of  a  more  unselfish  public  servant,  a  more 
courageous  champion  of  human  rights,  or  a  more  devoted 
lover  of  his  country. 

He  was  on  the  side  of  those  who  won  in  the  contest  for 
the  emancipation  of  a  race,  and  the  result  marks  the  age 
and  satisfies  a  Christian  world  ;  but  he  never  exulted  over 
those  who  lost,  and  earned  no  trophies  of  the  contest  in 
his  belt  and  no  unspent  anger  in  his  bosom.  All  he  asked 
was  that  no  step  backward  should  be  taken,  and  that  free 
men  should  have  the  rights  of  freemen. 

Little  qualified  as  he  might  be  supposed  to  have  been 
for  the  work  of  a  historian,  yet,  having  selected  the  great 
theme  of  "The  Rise  and  Fall  of  the  Slave  Power  in 
America,"  he  fortunately  was  able  here  to  concentrate  his 
life-thoughts  and  to  marshal  the  large  array  of  facts  which 
had  long  crowded  his  memory,  or  which  he  gathered  with 
tireless  industry,  in  so  creditable  a  manner,  so  full  and  so 
fair,  as  possibly  to  make  this,  though  left  incomplete,  the 
most  prominent  work  of  his  life,  and  the  one  which  may 
serve  longest  to  perpetuate  his  memory  and  give  the  most 
enduring  luster  to  his  name. 

He  was  a  peace-maker.  Careful  himself  not  to  give 
offense,  he  was  pained  when  any  strife  arose  among  his 
associates,  and  made  haste  to  obtain,  if  possible,  explana 
tions  leading  to  a  restoration  of  harmony  and  good-will. 
If  successful,  he  at  least  was  made  happy.  He  was  not 


48  ADDRESS  BY  MR.  MORRILL,   OF  VERMONT,   ON  THE 

ashamed  of  his  poverty,  and  yet  never  failed  to  dilate 
with  pride  upon  the  amplitude  of  the  wealth  of  his  native 
land.  He  died  poor,  but  rich  in  the  greatest  of  estates — 
the  affections  of  his  countrymen. 

Senators,  we  are  witnesses  that  all  of  his  capabilities, 
whether  of  nature  or  nurture,  were  ever  actively  em 
ployed — no  fragment  of  his  strength  nor  of  his  time  ran 
to  waste.  If,  as  it  occurs  to  most  busy  public  men  travel 
ing  toward  the  undiscovered  country,  his  tired  hand  left 
unfinished  some  share  of  his  projected  work,  we  know  he 
passed  away  in  full  faith  that  he  was  summoned  to  higher 
work,  and,  whatever  he  might  here  leave  unwritten,  that 
he  would  find  his  own  name  in  the  Book  of  Life  written 
by  a  hand  divine. 


LIFE  AND   CHARACTER  OF  HENRY  WILSON.  49 


Address  by  Mr.    Stevenson,  of  Kentucky. 


Mr.  President,  I  have  listened  with  interest  to  the  elo 
quent  tributes  of  respect  to  the  memory  of  the  distin 
guished  dead  which  have  been  offered  by  the  Senators 
who  have  preceded  me.  From  their  stand-point,  little 
could  be  added  to  their  pathos,  to  their  beauty,  or  to 
their  justice;  and  yet,  I  should  feel  that  my  duty  were 
but  half  performed,  if  I  did  not  on  this  occasion,  tender  to 
the  people  of  Massachusetts,  the  heartfelt  sympathy  and 
condolence  of  the  Commonwealth  of  Kentucky  upon  the 
sad  bereavement,  which,  in  removing  from  our  midst  the 
Vice-President  of  the  United  States,  deprives  that  ven 
erable  Commonwealth  of  one  of  her  most  distinguished 
sons. 

The  life  of  HENRY  WILSON  is  full  of  instruction.  It  is 
wonderful  in  its  incidents;  it  is  novel  in  its  results.  His 
success  is  a  just  and  beautiful  commentary  on  American 
institutions.  It  is  an  example  of  their  excellence;  it  un 
folds  their  beneficence ;  it  illustrates  most  grandly  their 
equality. 

Self-exertion  was  the  key  to  his  success.  He  was 
born  in  obscurity  amid  the  wilds  and  snows  of  New 
Hampshire.  Without  friends,  without  influence,  extreme 

7  w 


50  ADDRESS  BY  MR.   STEVENSON  ON  THE 

poverty  forced  him  at  an  early  age  into  close  compan 
ionship  with  the  manual  tillage  of  New  Hampshire's 
sterile  soil.  He  was  cheerful,  healthy,  contented,  and 
industrious.  His  early  years  were  spent  in  the  Spartan 
simplicity  and  purity  of  New  England  life.  Without 
books,  he  coveted  knowledge.  That  very  want  created 
the  independence  of  thought  which  afterward  became 
so  prominent  an  element  in  his  life.  Self-wrought,  self- 
reliant,  HENRY  WILSON  was  molded  in  that  massive  type 
of  New  Hampshire  manhood,  of  which  Woodbury,  and 
Chase,  and  Webster  were  the  grander  and  more  conspicu 
ous  exemplars. 

Subsequently,  agricultural  labor  was  exchanged  for 
the  manufacture  of  shoes.  In  1855,  by  self-culture, 
industry,  and  study,  the  shoemaker  of  Massachusetts 
became  the  Senator  of  that  Commonwealth  in  this 
Chamber  of  Equals.  Seventeen  years  later,  and  the 
humble  cobbler  of  Natick  was  called  by  the  people  to 
become  Vice-President  of  the  United  States.  What  a 
struggle  !  What  an  issue  !  What  a  triumph !  What  in 
centives  to  virtuous  and  lofty  exertion  do  the  incidents  of 
his  life  hold  out  to  the  industrious  and  friendless  youth 
throughout  the  length  and  breadth  of  this  vast  land ! 
And,  as  homage  is  paid  to  virtue,  as  an  incentive  to  its 
cultivation,  how  just,  how  meet,  how  proper,  that  the 
good,  the  great,  and  the  noble  should  be  honored  and 
their  names  preserved ! 

This  is  not  the  time,  nor  am  I  the  person  to  enter  into 


LITE   AND   CHARACTER   OF   HENRY   WILSON.  51 

tlie  consideration  of  the  public  character  and  political 
services  of  the  late  Vice-President,  interwoven  as  they 
have  been  with  the  history  of  our  country  during  a  period 
of  intense  sectional  excitement,  including,  too,  within  its 
range,  a  gigantic,  bloody  civil  war.  He  was,  in  my  judg 
ment,  more  of  an  enthusiast  and  of  a  politician,  than  of 
a  clear,  philosophical,  well-balanced  statesman.  Human 
liberty  to  him  seemed  an  extravagant  day-dream!  Its 
very  excess,  without  limitation,  without  restriction,  in 
violation  of  law,  was  an  accomplishment  earnestly,  con 
stantly,  and  most  sincerely  desired. 

Could  HENRY  WILSON  have  known  it,  there  were  states 
men  in  southern  portions  of  the  old  thirteen  States,  who, 
could  they  have  willed  it,  would  have  removed  slavery. 
There  were  others  in  the  State  in  which  he  was  born,  and 
that  in  which  he  lived,  and  where  he  now  sleeps,  who 
also  would  have  rejoiced  to  see  slavery  extirpated.  But 
these  wise  men  would  have  regulated  that  removal  by 
law.  They  would  have  taken  no  step  which  did  not  find 
its  sanction  in  the  Constitution.  Such  men  were  part 
and  parcel  of  that  band  whose  valor  won  our  liberty, 
and  whose  wisdom  sought  its  preservation  under  a  sys 
tem  of  constitutional  self-government,  binding  into  a 
common  brotherhood,  thirteen  sovereign  States,  with  their 
diverse  domestic  institutions,  and  varied  interests,  under 
one  common  government  for  mutual  defense,  protection, 
and  external  intercourse,  but  leaving  each  State  free  and 
unrestricted,  under  its  separate  constitution,  to  manage 


52  ADDRESS  BY  MR.  STEVENSON  ON  TBTE 

and  regulate  its  own  internal  polity.  Such  was  the  Union 
born  of  the  Revolution  and  ordained  by  the  Constitu 
tion  of  the  United  States. 

But  I  forbear.  The  life,  public  character,  and  services 
of  HENRY  WILSON  will  be  upon  another  occasion  intrusted 
to  other  hands.  Be  mine  the  poor  privilege  to-day  to  speak 
only  of  traits  in  the  character  of  the  dead  which  commanded 
my  admiration,  and  which,  now  that  he  is  gone,  I  shall 
love  to  dwell  upon  with  melancholy  pleasure. 

I  knew  HENRY  WILSON  for  eighteen  years.  When  I 
entered  the  House  of  Representatives  in  1857,  he  had 
bnt  a  short  time  before,  taken  his  seat  in  this  Chamber.  My 
intercourse  with  him  was  then  formal  but  friendly.  When 
I  subsequently  entered  the  Senate  in  1871,  he  received 
me  with  a  kindness  and  cordiality  which  I  can  never 
forget.  The  official  conduct  of  Mr.  WILSON  was  always 
unexceptionable.  As  a  Senator,  he  was  dignified,  urbane, 
kind,  and  respectful.  As  its  Presiding  Officer,  he  was  just, 
honest,  and  impartial,  and  sought  always  to  do  right.  No 
man  could  have  been  more  simple  and  unostentatious 
in 'his  tastes,  or,  as  it  seemed  to  me,  more  self-denying 
and  frugal  in  his  life.  But  it  is  just  to  say,  that  my 
intercourse  with  Vice-President  WILSON  extended  only  to 
public  and  personal  intercourse  within  these  halls.  I  never 
followed  him  into  those  closer  circles  of  domestic  life 
where  all  the  virtues  and  all  the  affections  of  the  human 
heart  blossom  and  entwine  themselves  around  the  loved 
ones  who  constitute  the  charmed  circle  of  home.  So  far 


LIFE  AND  CHARACTER  OF  HENRY  WILSON.  53 

as  I  know — so  far  as  I  believe — he  was  upright,  virtuous, 
temperate,  just,  and,  in  the  latter  part  of  his  public  career, 
when  the  meridian  heats  of  party  strife  had  given  way  to 
those  autumnal  and  clearer  tints  of  life's  declining  sun, 
his  heart  seemed  to  expand,  and,  as  he  more  than  once, 
told  me,  its  love  embraced  every  section  of  his  entire 
country.  He  said  he  was  tired  of  the  strife,  discord,  and 
sectional  alienation  with  which  the  Congress  of  the  United 
States  had  of  late  so  much  abounded. 

But,  Mr.  President,  he  is  gone — gone  from  us  forever! 
He  died  suddenly.  He  died  in  the  Capitol.  He  died 
with  the  harness  on.  His  sun  went  down  without  a  cloud 
upon  its  disk.  Its  last  rays  were  clear,  bright,  and  tran 
quil.  His  spirit,  we  would  fain  hope,  intrepid  and  unter- 
rified,  resting  with  faith  upon  its  Saviour  and  upon  its  God, 
was  borne  safely  through  the  dark  valley  of  the  shadow 
of  death.  Peace,  then,  to  his  ashes ! 

Senators,  death,  it  seems  to  me,  of  late  years  has  been 
entering  oftener  and  more  frequently  into  this  Chamber. 
Year  by  year  its  monitory  messages  addressed  to  our  frail 
individual  humanity  come  oftener  and  come  quicker.  But 
they  all  bear  the  same  solemn,  unwelcome  truth — 

The  paths  of  glory  lead  but  to  the  grave ! 


54  ADDRESS  BY  MR.  INGALLS  ON  THE 


Address  by    Mr.   Tngalls,  of  Kansas. 


Mr.  President,  it  has  been  common  to  allude  to  the  his 
tory  of  men  like  HENRY  WILSON  as  peculiarly  American, 
and  to  declare  that  such  careers  are  possible  only  under 
republican  institutions.  Nothing  could  be  further  from 
the  truth.  The  world  has  had  few  leaders  who  were  born 
to  an  inheritance  of  power.  Its  real  kings  have  not  been 
the  sons  of  kings.  Its  acknowledged  monarchs  have  not 
descended  from  monarchs.  The  founders  of  its  philoso 
phies  have  not  been  the  children  of  philosophers,  nor  of 
its  dynasties  the  heirs  of  emperors.  The  framers  of  the 
creeds,  the  inventors  of  the  faiths  and  religions  of  the  hu 
man  race,  have  come  from  the  manger,  the  forge,  the  car 
penter's  bench,  and  not  from  the  church.  The  great 
leaders  of  its  armies  have  not  sprung  from  warriors ;  and 
those  who  have  written  the  dramas  and  pronounced  the 
orations  that  are  immortal  have  inherited  neither  their  pas 
sion  nor  their  eloquence.  A  pedigree  may  be  gratifying 
to  pride  but  it  is  not  consoling  to  ambition. 

The  choicest  products  of  nature  are  developed  in  her 
valleys,  and  not  on  her  summits;  and  in  the  lower  social 
strata  we  find  the  origin  of  the  most  successful  men. 

In  the  profession  of  public  affairs  or  statecraft,  it  may 


LIFE  AND  CHARACTER  OF  HENRY  WILSON.  55 

be  that  the  operation  of  this  universal  law  is  more  ap 
parent  under  a  political  system  like  ours,  where  the  hard 
restrictions  and  limitations  of  custom,  precedent,  and  con 
vention  do  not  prevail ;  but  our  history  gives  ample  illus 
tration  of  its  truth.  To  discriminate  among  the  living 
would  be  ungracious,  but  if  we  inquire  who  among  the 
illustrious  servants  of  the  Eepublic  in  the  past  have  most 
ineffaceably  stamped  their  ideas  and  purposes  upon  the 
institutions  and  irrevocably  shaped  the  destinies  of  the 
nation,  the  answer  would  designate  those  who  had  not 
been  favored  by  birth  or  fortune.  Jackson  and  Lincoln 
among  the  Presidents,  Webster,  Clay,  and  Douglas  among 
the  statesmen,  are  imperishably  associated  with  the  first 
century  of  the  Republic.  Emerging  from  an  obscurity 
more  profound  than  either  of  these,  and  reaching  an  ele 
vation  that  gives  him  a  permanent  position  in  our  history, 
HENRY  WILSON  demands  to-day  the  last  formal  recogni 
tion  and  tribute  that  his  country  can  extend  to  his  acts 
and  his  fame. 

The  story  of  his  life  has  been  told  by  his  successor, 
whose  powerful  delineation  of  his  character  and  services 
has  left  nothing  to  be  recounted  save  the  lessons  of  his 
marvelous  career. 

It  is  perhaps  not  too  much  to  say  that  he  succeeded  less 
in  spite  of  his  disadvantages  than  because  of  them.  The 
defects  of  his  training  and  scholarship,  the  laborious  pov 
erty  of  his  youth,  the  humble  avocations  of  his  early 
manhood,  were  favorable  to  his  fortunes.  They  kept  him 


56  ADDRESS  BY  MR.  1NGALLS  ON  THE 

on  a  level  with  the  masses  of  the  people  and  enabled  him 
to  interpret  their  purposes  with  prophetic  accuracy.  It 
was  by  reason  of  this  that  he  became  a  popular  orator 
without  being  eloquent,  that  lie  became  a  voluminous 
author  without  the  advantages  of  preliminary  education, 
that  the  men  of  Massachusetts  ignored  their  patricians  and 
sent  the  Natick  cobbler  to  the  Senate,  and  finally  to  die 
in  the  Capitol  of  the  nation. 

He  possessed  in  an  eminent  degree  that  peculiar  assem 
blage  of  physical,  mental,  and  moral  qualities  that  are 
requisite  to  political  success  in  a  popular  government.  He 
was  from  and  of  the  people  pre-eminently;  not  alienated 
from  them  by  extraordinary  endowments  or  great  wealth 
or  superior  culture,  but  exhibiting  only  a  higher  degree  or 
a  more  vigorous  activity  of  the  virtues  and  powers  that 
are  common  among  men ;  industry,  diligence,  patience, 
and  scrupulous  integrity.  So  that  the  great  body  of 
citizens  in  supporting  him  seemed  to  be  indirectly  paying 
a  tribute  of  respect  to  themselves,  and  not  yielding  either 
a  willing  or  reluctant  obedience  to  a  superior  or  ruler. 

But  no  public  man,  whatever  may  be  his  qualifications, 
can  succeed  unless  he  identifies  himself  with  some  idea  or 
conviction  existing  in  the  minds  of  the  people.  He  who 
would  lead  must  follow.  And  in  this  respect  the  Vice- 
President  was  especially  fortunate.  He  entered  public 
life  at  the  commencement  of  that  great  revolt  of  the  na 
tional  conscience  against  human  slavery,  and  thenceforth 
he  devoted  all  his  energies  to  its  extinction.  He  became 


LIFE  AND  CHARACTER  OF  HENRY  WILSON.  57 

one  of  the  great  exponents  and  representatives  of  this 
idea.  It  gave  form,  substance,  and  complexion  to  all  his 
efforts.  He  mastered  its  statistics,  defined  its  purposes, 
and  in  the  great  contest  that  followed  he  bore  a  notable 
and  conspicuous  part.  He  gave  expression  to  the  resolve 
of  the  loyal  millions  that  in  the  country  of  Washington 
the  creed  of  human  liberty  should  not  be  an  unmeaning 
formula  nor  the  brotherhood  of  man  an  empty  dream. 
This  the  measure  of  his  work  and  its  reward. 


L  I  B  R  A  K  Y 

UNIVERSITY  OF 

L    CALIFORNIA. 




8  w 


58  ADDRESS  BY  MR.  BOGY  ON  THE 


Address  by    Mr.  |3ogy,  of    Missouri. 


Mr.  President,  I  met  Mr.  WILSON  for  the  first  time  in 
March,  1873,  when  he  administered  to  me  the  oath  as  a 
Senator.  A  few  days  afterward  I  called  on  him  at  his 
lodgings  to  pay  him  my  respects,  and  a  short  time  after 
this  he  returned  me  the  visit.  This  was  the  extent  of  our 
intercourse,  besides  exchanging  a  few  friendly  words  on 
the  floor  of  this  body.  I  therefore  cannot  claim  to  have 
known  him  personally  very  well ;  but  his  history  as  a  pub 
lic  man  is  not  unknown  to  me,  and  it  is  in  this  character 
that  I  desire  to  speak  of  him  on  this  occasion.  His  career 
was  certainly  very  remarkable,  and  both  suggestive  and 
instructive.  He  was  born  in  New  Hampshire,  but  it  is  as 
a  child  of  the  old  State  of  Massachusetts  that  he  is  known 
to  the  world.  We  are  informed  that  he  was  born  in  the 
humblest  station  and  had  no  advantages  of  early  educa 
tion,  compelled  at  the  outset  of  life  to  learn  a  trade  so  as 
to  earn  his  livelihood. 

The  State  in  which  his  lot  was  cast  is  known  for  its 
wealth,  social  refinement,  high  education ;  for  its  numer 
ous  men  of  distinction  in  all  the  professions,  and  also  for 
its  large  number  of  distinguished  public  characters,  many 
of  whom  have  been  known  to  the  country  as  men  of  the 


LIFE  AND  CHARACTER  OP  HENRY  WILSON.  59 

most  exalted  abilities.  It  was  among  such  men  and  in 
such  a  society  and  under  such  circumstances  that  he 
had  to  make  his  way,  from  way  down,  up  to  fame  and  to 
distinction,  and  yet  he  successfully  secured  both.  Was 
this  the  result  of  accident,  of  what  is  vulgarly  called  luck, 
or  was  it  the  reward  of  great  intellectual  gifts?  It  was 
neither.  Mere  luck  will  not  secure  such  a  prize.  Yet 
there  must  have  been  something  in  his  character  to  have 
enabled  him  to  accomplish  what  he  did  accomplish.  Luck 
or  favorable  circumstances  alone  will  accomplish  nothing. 
But  the  existence  of  favorable  circumstances,  which 
exist  at  some  time  or  other  for  all  men,  in  all  countries,  in 
all  ages,  and  under  all  forms  of  government,  wisely  and 
intelligently  understood  and  firmly  and  with  a  fixed  pur 
pose  taken  advantage  of,  will  lead  to  fame  or  fortune  as 
may  be  desired.  Men  of  action — I  mean  by  this  that  class 
of  men  who  acquire  either  political  or  military  fame — never 
have  acquired  or  ever  can  acquire  distinction  without  fa 
vorable  circumstances.  Washington  would  have  lived  as 
an  intelligent  and  good  farmer  in  Virginia,  and  never  have 
been  known  to  the  world  without  the  circumstance  of  the 
American  Revolution;  yet  this  circumstance  was  not  of  his 
creation.  It  may  be  safely  said  that  other  men  did  more 
at  the  outset  to  bring  it  about  than  he  did ;  yet  he  wisely 
took  advantage  of  it,  and  it  enabled  him  to  secure  a  name 
and  fame  without  a  parallel  in  the  world.  So  it  may  be 
said  of  Cromwell.  Without  the  English  revolution  he 
would  have  died  unknown ;  yet,  taking  advantage  of  it, 


60  ADDRESS  BY  MB.  BOGY  ON  THE 

he  ruled  not  only  the  destinies  of  England  but  of  Europe, 
and,  indeed,  of  the  world  for  a  time.  So  it  may  be  said  of 
Napoleon.  Without  the  French  revolution,  with  the  be 
ginning  of  which  he  was  in  no  way  connected,  he  would 
have  lived  and  died  on  the  island  of  Corsica ;  yet,  the  cir 
cumstance  of  this  great  uprising  of  the  French  people 
occurring,  he  took  advantage  of  it,  and  lie  too  for  a  time 
ruled  the  destinies  of  his  country  and  of  Europe,  and 
acquired  a  name  for  military  genius  and  broad  statesman 
ship  unequaled  by  any  one  in  any  age  of  the  world. 

The  circumstance  which  presented  itself  to  Mr.  WILSON 
was  the  slavery  question.  He  saw,  as  he  believed — and, 
as  events  have  turned  out,  he  did  so  with  a  remarkable 
prescience — that  it  would  become  the  great  question  of  his 
day,  particularly  in  his  section.  He  early  identified  him 
self  with  it,  and  as  it  acquired  strength  and  popularity  he 
rose  with  it.  Showing  at  the  outset  an  intelligent  com 
prehension  of  the  question,  and  exhibiting  purpose  and 
firmness  to  rise  or  fall  with  it,  its  success  was  his  success; 
and  so  it  may  be  said  of  the  three  great  characters  first 
mentioned.  Had  the  great  events  with  which  they  had 
linked  their  destinies  failed,  they,  too,  would  have  failed. 

Thus,  Mr.  President,  it  is  seen  that  it  is  not  mere  bril 
liant  genius  and  high  intellectual  endowments  which  secure 
the  largest  prizes  in  fame's  lottery ;  but  purpose,  will,  man 
hood,  courage,  all  presided  over  by  intelligence,  although 
this  intelligence  may  be  infinitely  below  that  of  Lord 
Bacon.  Hence  I  say  that  the  life  of  Mr.  WILSON  is  in- 


LIFE  AND  CHARACTER  OF  HENRY  WILSON.  61 

structive  to  the  millions  of  poor  and  obscure  boys,  how- 
aver  humble,  who  are  scattered  throughout  this  broad  land, 
and  surely  none  can  start  from  a  humbler  position  than  he 
did;  and  as  he  attained  fame  and  distinction,  and  died 
holding  the  second  office  in  this  Government,  to  which  he 
had  been  called  by  a  majority  of  his  countrymen,  why 
may  not  many  other  poor  and  obscure  boys  do  the  same? 
They  need  not  fear  the  want  of  favorable  circumstances ; 
they  in  some  shape  or  under  some  peculiar  condition  exist 
always  in  each  and  every  generation. 

Our  epoch  will  be  marked  in  history  for  having  given 
birth  to-  three  men,  each  one  of  whom  was  born  in  such 
lowly  condition  as  to  be  nearly  beyond  the  power  of  full 
realization.  Yet  one  of  these  men  became  by  election  the 
President  of  this  country,  and  the  two  others  were  elected 
to  the  second  highest  office — .Lincoln,  Johnson,  and  WIL 
SON — all  contemporaries,  all  in  public  life  at  the  same  time. 
Many  years  ago,  in  a  debate  in  the  House  of  Representa 
tives,  some  one  said  that  General  Jackson  had  no  educa 
tion.  Mr.  Randolph,  of  Roanoke,  replied  that  this  perhaps 
was  true,  but  that  Jackson  knew  how  to  make  his  mark. 
So  it  may  be  said  of  these  three  men ;  they  had  no  edu 
cation,  or,  at  least,  no  perfect  education,  being  all  self- 
taught,  but  each  and  all  have  made  their  mark  in  indelible 
characters  upon  the  pages  of  our  history. 

This  occasion  is  suggestive  to  me  of  another  great  fact— 
the  march  of  empire,  the  spread  of  our  grand  system  of 
free  government,  which  opens  its  portals  wide  and  broad  ' 


62 


ADDRESS  BY  MR.  BOGY  ON  THE 


to  all  the  youths  of  this  country,  regardless  of  the  advan 
tages  of  family,  wealth,  or  high  social  position.  Mr.  WIL 
SON  was  a  child  of  New  England.  At  the  time  of  his 
birth,  my  native  State,  which  I  in  part  have  the  honor  to 
represent  on  this  floor,  was  the  outboundary  of  the  Re 
public,  the  home  of  a  few  French  Canadians,  whose  fore 
fathers  had  penetrated  more  than  a  hundred  years  before 
the  vast  wilderness  of  the  West  as  hunters  and  trappers — 
the  true  pioneers  of  the  valley  of  the  Mississippi.  Mis 
souri  was  then  in  what  is  known  as  the  first  grade  of  ter 
ritorial  government,  and  had  within  its  extended  boundaries 
less  than  thirty  thousand  inhabitants.  Now  it  has  a  popu 
lation  of  two  millions.  The  secret  of  this  rapid  growth, 
this  vast  extension,  is  to  be  found  in  the  beneficent  sys 
tem  of  republican  government,  which  tells  in  language 
not  to  be  mistaken  to  all  the  youths  of  this  country,  the 
rich  and  the  poor,  the  high  and  the  low,  the  perfectly  edu 
cated  and  the  self-educated,  that  the  rewards  and  honors 
of  the  great  Republic  belong  to  all,  and  will  be  awarded 
to  the  most  meritorious.  Like  the  contest  in  the  garden 
of  the  Hesperides,  the  race  is  open  to  all — Athenians, 
Spartans,  Boeotians,  and  Macedonians.  He  who  shall 
prove  the  swifter  in  the  race  will  secure  the  golden  apple. 
Mr.  President,  in  conclusion  I  will  say  that  it  is  my  na 
ture — perhaps  the  effect  of  the  circumstances  which  sur 
rounded  my  own  early  life  in  the  wilderness  of  the  West, 
among  the  rugged  but  honest  and  brave  pioneers  of  that 
country — to  entertain  a  profound  admiration  for  such 


LIFE  AND  CHARACTER  OF  HENRY  WILSON.  63 

characters  as  Lincoln,  Johnson,  and  WILSON — men  who 
were  the  architects  of  their  own  fortunes,  and  who  relied 
alone  on  their  own  brave  hearts  and  strong  arms  and  a 
beneficent  Government  for  the  fame  and  name  which  they 
achieved. 


64  ADDRESS  BY  MR.  MORTON  ON  THE 


A 


ddress  by    Mr.    Morton,  of  Indiana. 


Mr.  President,  I  have  had  no  time  or  opportunity  to 
prepare  a  fitting  eulogy;  and  I  can  only  utter  those 
thoughts  that  are  uppermost  in  my  mind  in  regard  to 
HENRY  WILSON.  He  was  a  man  of  very  marked  charac 
teristics,  and  his  public  career  in  some  respects  stands  out 
from  all  the  statesmen  of  his  day.  Born  in  poverty,  as 
has  been  said,  having  no  advantages  of  early  education, 
without  riches  and  influential  friends  to  push  him  forward 
in  the  world,  he  was  the  architect  of  his  own  fortunes,  and 
it  may  be  said  in  a  very  peculiar  sense  he  fought  his  bat 
tles  alone.  He  had  no  partisans.  He  cared  little  for 
public  patronage;  but  he  relied  upon  the  strength  of  pub 
lic  opinion  and  the  principles  which  he  advocated.  His 
great  strength  was  in  his  convictions.  He  was  a  man  of 
ideas,  and  relied  upon  ideas  for  his  success.  He  was  a 
man  of  courage.  He  dared  to  follow  his  convictions 
wherever  they  led  him,  and  he  was  brave  enough  to  refuse 
to  fight  a  duel  in  this  capital  at  a  time  when  the  spirit  of 
dueling  ruled  here  and  heaped  ridicule  upon  every  man 
who  refused  to  acknowledge  the  "code." 

The  world  will    acknowledge    hereafter    that    HENRY 


LIFE  AND  CHARACTER  OF  HENRY  WILSON.  65 

WILSON  was  right  upon  all  great  questions  affecting  human 
liberty  and  the  progress  of  the  age.  His  political  career 
was  cast  at  a  time  when  there  was  more  attention  paid  to 
the  discussion  of  the  fundamental  principles  of  our  Gov 
ernment  and  the  rights  of  man  than  to  mere  economic 
questions ;  and  it  was  in  the  consideration  of  such  ques 
tions  that  he  derived  his  fame.  He  was  not  a  man  of 
brilliant  or  showy  talents,  but  he  was  a  man  of  great 
talents,  if  we  can  judge  by  results  accomplished.  Many 
acquire  reputation  for  great  talents  who  never  achieve 
anything;  but  HENRY  WILSON,  without  having  that  repu 
tation,  did  achieve  great  results. 

He  was  essentially  a  practical  man.  I  was  associated 
with  him  on  this  floor  for  six  years  as  a  Senator,  and 
during  all  that  time  I  never  knew  him  to  advertise  an 
effort ;  I  never  knew  him  to  speak  for  the  applause  of  the 
galleries.  He  spoke  only  to  convince  the  Senate  and  to 
accomplish  the  purpose  he  had  in  view.  But,  sir,  it  is 
doubtful  whether  any  man  of  his  time  had  more  influence 
upon  public  opinion  than  had  HENRY  WILSON.  The 
country  had  confidence  in  his  devotion.  He  was  right 
upon  the  great  questions,  and  the  country  will  come  to 
believe  that.  He  was  a  quarter  of  a  century  in  advance 
of  his  time. 

There  is  one  respect  in  which  the  character  of  HENRY 
WILSON  as  a  statesman  will  stand  out  from  the  men  of  his 
time,  and  that  is  as  the  representative  of  the  workingmen. 
Of  humble  origin,  brought  up  to  labor,  all  his  sympa- 


9  w 


66  ADDRESS  BY  MR.  MORTON  ON  THE 

thies  were  identified  with  that  class  of  our  countrymen. 
Respecting  scrupulously  the  rights  of  property  and  of 
capital,  yet  it  was  always  his  purpose  and  seemed  to  be 
his  aim  to  elevate  the  laboring  men.  He  desired  their 
education,  and  sought  in  every  way  in  his  power  to  alle 
viate  their  condition,  both  male  and  female. 

His  life  was  somewhat  lonely,  especially  the  last  years 
of  it,  going  into  society  sometimes,  but  never  fondly.  He 
preferred  his  studies,  and  his  great  object  was  to  complete 
the  work  upon  which  he  was  engaged,  "The  Rise  and  Fall 
of  the  Slave  Power."  He  did  not  quite  succeed  in  that 
purpose.  Had  he  been  spared  a  few  months,  perhaps  a 
few  weeks  longer,  the  work  would  have  been  finished.  I 
have  frequently  heard  him  speak  of  it  fondly,  and  of  his 
great  desire  to  complete  it.  He  wanted  to  leave  that  as 
the  literary  record  of  his  life. 

He  was  kind-hearted.  I  believe  he  never  entertained 
malice.  I  do  not  remember  that  I  ever  heard  him  speak 
unkindly  of  any  one,  and  while  earnestly  maintaining  the 
Union  and  zealous  in  suppressing  the  rebellion,  he  seemed 
to  entertain  no  malice  toward  the  men  who  originated  the 
rebellion  and  carried  it  on.  He  seemed  to  believe  his 
work  was  done  when  slavery  was  abolished  and  the  rebel 
lion  was  suppressed.  Taking  a  deep  interest  in  recon 
struction,  he  seemed  to  believe  that  that  was  a  thing  to 
follow  as  a  matter  of  course,  and  that  victory  was  won  in 
the  destruction  of  slavery  aiid  suppression  of  the  rebellion. 

A  man  of  simple  character,  utterly  indifferent  to  dis- 


LIFE  AND   CHARACTER   OF  HENRY  WILSON.  67 

play,  and  seemingly  indifferent  to  fame,  yet  undoubtedly 
keenly  alive  to  the  good  opinion  of  his  countrymen,  he 
has  left  behind  him  a  memory  that  ought  to  be  cherished, 
and,  as  has  just  been  said,  he  is  an  example  to  the  youth 
of  our  country  of  what  can  be  accomplished  by  sound 
sense,  by  industry,  by  patient  devotion  to  study. 

He  was  emphatically  a  self-made  man.  No  man  this 
country  has  ever  produced  was  more  clearly  entitled  to 
that  distinction.  As  I  before  said,  he  fought  his  battles 
almost  alone ;  he  fought  without  those  aids  that  often 
elevate  men  to  power  and  distinction.  He  has  won  a 
great  name  that  will  grow  brighter  and  brighter  as  time 
passes  on. 

I  cherished  for  him  a  warm  friendship.  I  met  him  first 
in  1855,  in  the  State  of  Indiana.  It  was  about  the  first 
appearance  I  had  made  in  the  political  field.  A  public 
meeting  was  held  in  the  city  of  Indianapolis  on  the  occa 
sion  of  the  anniversary  of  the  ordinance  of  1787  ;  I  think 
it  was  on  the  13th  of  July.  I  heard  him  make  a  speech 
there,  and  it  was  my  privilege  to  follow  him  in  a  short 
address,  and  he  spoke  to  me  on  that  day  words  of  kind 
ness  and  of  encouragement  that  I  shall  never  forget.  A 
friendship  began  then  which  grew  stronger  and  stronger 
until  he  was  taken  away.  I  shall  personally  revere  and 
cherish  the  memory  of  HENRY  WILSON,  and  so,  I  believe, 
will  all  who  knew  him  well. 


68  ADDRESS  BY  MR.  ANTHONY  ON  THE 


Address  by    Mr.    Anthony,  of  Rhode  Island. 


Mr.  President,  it  was  well  said  by  my  friend  from  Ken 
tucky  that  the  life  of  HENRY  WILSON  forms  a  chapter  of 
American  history  full  of  instruction ;  it  is  full  of  cheerful 
instruction,  full  of  hope  to  languid  patriotism,  full  of 
encouragement  to  ingenuous  youth.  In  his  desolate  and 
unprotected  childhood,  in  the  early  struggles  through 
which  his  faculties  developed  into  strength  and  his  virtues 
hardened  into  consistency,  in  the  steadfast  purpose  and 
the  great  results  of  his  manhood,  we  have  an  illustration 
and  a  vindication  of  free  institutions.  With  no  advan 
tages  of  birth  or  connection,  he  outstripped,  in  the  career 
of  life,  those  who  started  with  him  in  the  enjoyment 
of  them  all.  The  strength  that  he  acquired  in  overcoming 
obstacles  that  friendly  hands  had  removed  from  the  paths 
of  others  enabled  him  to  meet,  with  greater  vigor,  those 
obstacles  which  every  man  must  encounter  for  himself. 
Without  assistance,  at  the  age  when  assistance  is  most 
needed,  with  little  sympathy,  till  he  had  won  a  position 
that  made  him  independent  of  it,  he  raised  himself  to  the 
second  place  in  the  Republic,  and,  in  the  minds  of  many, 
was  designated  for  the  first. 


LIFE  AND  CHARACTER  OF  HENRY  WILSON.  69 

I  do  not  purpose  to  delineate  his  character,  or  to  recount 
the  story  of  his  life.  I  should  only  repeat  what  has  been 
better  said,  here  and  elsewhere,  by  those  to  whom  the 
grateful  duty  was  most  appropriate.  Enough  that,  in  an 
age  too  much  devoted  to  the  pursuit  of  wealth,  he  earned 
his  contempt  for  money  to  a  fault;  that  in  a  time  when 
the  luxuriousness  of  private  life  had  invaded  the  purity  and 
threatened  the  safety  of  society,  he  preserved  the  simple 
habits  that  best  become  a  republican  magistrate;  that  as  he 
had  borne  adversity  without  murmuring  and  with  uncon 
querable  determination,  so  he  bore  success  with  modera 
tion;  and  that,  in  all  his  high  employments,  the  possession 
of  power  never  provoked  him  to  insolence  in  the  exercise 
of  it.  I  will  not  adduce,  among  the  evidences  of  his 
merit,  that  his  personal  character  mainly  escaped  calumny, 
for  the  best  men  in  public  life  are  not  the  least  vilified, 
and  political  malignity  seeks  not  the  justice  but  the  occa 
sion  of  assault.  But  even  that  malignity  could  find  little 
upon  which  to  fasten  its  fangs  in  one  whose  chief  use  for 
money  was  to  give  it  to  others,  and  whose  only  use  of 
power  was  for  the  public  good. 

Nor  was  the  occasion  of  his  death  inappropriate  to  his 
life.  It  has  been  lamented  that  the  inevitable  hour  found 
him  away  from  his  home,  and  without  the  tender  ministra 
tions  of  woman.  In  this  regret  I  do  not  share.  Where 
should  the  patriot  warrior  die,  rather  than  on  the  field  of 
battle  or  on  the  slippery  deck,  with  the  flag  of  his  country 
victorious  over  him?  Where  should  the  patriot  statesman 


70  ADDRESS  BY  MR.  ANTHONY  ON  THE 

whose  life  has  been  devoted  to  freedom  die,  rather  than 
in  the  Capitol,  whose  uplifted  Dome  bears  aloft  the  vin 
dicated  statue  of  Liberty? 

And  home  he  had  none.  No  man  shared  more  largely 
in  the  affections  of  the  American  people;  no  man  was 
more  beloved  by  his  immediate  constituency;  but  those 
pleasures  which  the  greatest  of  American  orators  placed 
above  all  the  other  immeasurable  blessings  of  rational 
existence,  above  the  treasures  of  science  and  the  delights 
of  learning  and  the  aspects  of  nature,  even  above  good 
government  and  religious  liberty,  "the  transcendent  sweets 
of  domestic  life,"  were  no  more  for  him.  Those  relations 
which  nature  intended  for  the  joy  and  the  rapture  of  our 
youth,  for  the  happiness  and  the  embellishment  of  our 
maturer  years,  for  the  comfort  and  consolation  of  age, 
had  been  severed  by  the  remorseless  shears  of  fate.  No 
eye  grew  brighter  when  he  raised  the  latch  that  held  his 
lonely  dwelling;  no  outstretched  arms  of  wife,  no  ringing 
laughter  of  children,  welcomed  his  returning  footsteps, 
when  he  crossed  the  threshold  over  which  all  that  had 
given  life,  and  joy,  and  beauty  to  that  simple  abode,  and 
had  lighted  it  up  with  a  glory  not  of  palaces,  had  been 
borne  never  to  return.  He  had  nothing  left  to  love  but 
his  country.  It  was  proper,  then,  that  he  should  die  here, 
here  where  his  greatest  work  had  been  wrought,  here 
where  his  greatest  triumphs  had  been  achieved,  here  where 
his  voice  had  been  raised,  till  the  outer  corridors  had 
echoed  back  his  words,  for  truth,  for  justice,  for  right. 


LIFE  AND  CHARACTER  OF  HENRY  WILSON.  71 

It  was  proper  that  from  yonder  Chamber,  to  which  the 
suffrages  of  his  fellow-citizens  had  carried  him,  he  was 
borne  to  his  final  place  of  rest.  He  entered  that  town, 
for  the  first  time,  a  friendless  lad,  all  his  possessions  car 
ried  in  a  bundle  which  swung  lightly  in  his  hand.  He 
entered  it,  for  the  last  time,  accompanied  by  the  pageantry 
of  a  nation's  woe,  with  muffled  drums,  and  arms  reversed, 
and  banners  draped  in  black;  from  a  thousand  heights 
the  flag  of  his  country  drooped  at  half-mast;  from  fort 
and  arsenal  and  dock-yard  the  booming  of  a  single  gun, 
at  solemn  intervals,  announced  the  progress  of  the  sad 
procession.  Tender  and  loving  hands  received  him; 
friends  and  neighbors,  who  loved  him  because  he  was 
good,  even  more  than  they  admired  him  because  he  was 
great,  stood  tearfully  around  his  open  grave.  The  bleak 
winds  of  a  New  England  winter  came  down  from  his 
native  hills,  and  moaned  his  requiem  through  the  leafless 
trees.  And  there,  with  swelling  hearts,  but  with  unfal 
tering  trust  in  the  eternal  promises  of  God,  they  laid  his 
manly  and  stalwart  form  to  mingle  with  the  dust  of  his 
kindred. 

I      i,  i  h  Li  A  R 


72  ADDRESS  BY  MR.  DA.WES  ON  THE 


Address  by    Mr.   Dawes,  of    Massachusetts. 


Mr.  President,  the  life  and  work  of  the  late  Vice-Presi- 
dent  were  in  all  respects  so  remarkable  that  they  challenge 
the  study  and  admiration  of  the  American  people.  The 
biography  of  distinguished  men,  the  richest  of  a  nation's 
treasures,  will  yield  large  space  to  the  one,  and  the  record 
of  great  and  noble  achievements,  a  nation's  proudest  mon 
ument,  will  comprehend  the  full  measure  of  the  other. 
And  yet,  to  the  most  intimate  friend  and  companion,  the 
lesson  is  not  easy.  That  life  so  fitly  closed  in  the  Capitol 
of  the  nation  to  whose  salvation  and  glory  it  was  conse 
crated,  and  that  work  so  graciously  terminated  at  the  goal 
of  all  his  desires,  have  neither  prototype  nor  parallel. 
Each  stands  out  alone  by  itself,  and  is  unlike  any  other 
that  has  gone  before  or  survived  it.  He  lived  from  infancy 
to  the  end  as  no  other  man  has  lived.  He  worked,  from 
his  first  entrance  into  public  life  till  his  departure,  as  no 
man  ever  worked  before  him.  He  was  a  creation,  a  spe 
cialty,  a  force  all  by  itself,  and  yet  ever  in  the  midst  and 
always  potent.  No  one  could  tell  how  he  had  attained 
to  this  individuality,  and  yet  no  one  would  correctly  cal 
culate  the  resultant  of  the  ever  multiplied  and  conflicting 


LIFE  AND  CHARACTER  OF  HENRY  WILSON.  73 

influences  bending  political  opinion  who  ignored  this 
factor. 

Of  so  obscure  and  humble  an  origin  that  whenever 
friendless  poverty  sought  for  a  type  or  representative, 
his  name  was  spoken  before  any  other;  of  a  public 
life  so  pure  and  upright  amid  temptation  and  sin  that 
his  example  was  held  up  for  imitation  before  all  others ; 
deprived  of  opportunities  for  the  acquisition  of  knowl 
edge  as  no  other  in  youth  or  manhood,  he  nevertheless 
sought  out  or  created  them,  and  availed  himself  of  a 
breadth  of  study  far  more  than  others  to  whom  opportu 
nities  come  unbidden  and  among  whom  learning  scatters 
her  treasures  with  the  most  lavish  hand.  He  studied  men 
more  than  books,  and  his  education  came  from  personal 
contact  with  the  practical  affairs  of  life,  and  not  from  the 
study  of  other  men's  acquisitions  in  knowledge.  His 
whole  life  bore  unmistakable  evidence  of  the  school  in 
which  its  lessons  were  learned.  Tested  by  the  standard 
of  those  the  world  calls  learned  he  was  no  scholar,  but 
tried  by  that  which  the  world  calls  safe,  practical,  useful, 
he  was  wise  beyond  his  generation.  While  he  read  books 
some  and  profited  much  by  their  perusal,  he  read  men 
more  and  thereby  gathered  a  larger  knowledge  of  the 
practical  duties  of  life  than  it  was  possible  for  him  to  have 
acquired  in  any  other  way. 

He  had  not  genius,  but  he  had  what  is  more  certain  of 
success,  industry  and  fidelity,  and  their  rewards  crowned 
his  endeavors.  No  one  can  understand  or  properly  esti- 


10  w 


74  ADDRESS  BY  MR.  DAWES  ON  THE 

mate  his  character  or  career  except  by  a  study  of  the 
elements  which  formed  the  one  and  furnished  the  instru 
mentalities  which  wrought  out  the  other.  It  was  impossi 
ble  that  he  should  be  like  other  men,  because  the  very 
food  which  was  his  necessity  the  multitude  of  men  shun 
or  escape.  And  thus  it  is  that  only  by  a  proper  study  of 
the  school  in  which  the  heart  and  head  of  HENRY  WILSON 
were  developed  can  be  found  the  key  to  that  remarkable 
life  and  noble  work  whose  sublime  termination  we  seek 
by  these  ceremonies  this  day  to  commemorate. 

The  world  upon  which  he  first  opened  his  eyes  was  an 
utterly  barren  waste,  and  nowhere,  in  all  his  journey 
through  it,  did  any  green  thing  gladden  his  sight  which 
his  own  hands  did  not  plant  and  his  own  fidelity  water  till 
it  bore  its  legitimate  fruit ;  nowhere  an  opportunity  for  im 
provement  or  work,  nor  an  instrumentality  for  the  accom 
plishment  of  good,  which  his  own  courage  and  indomitable 
will  did  not  pluck  from  the  very  jaws  of  an  adverse  fate. 
And  thus  he  was  never  educated  for  his  life-work,  but  only 
in  and  by  it,  and  he  grew  to  fitness  for  it,  and  to  a  mar 
velous  power  in  it,  just  as  the  right  arm  of  the  blacksmith 
grows  strong  through  the  very  blows  it  strikes. 

When  taste  led  him  into  politics  in  1840  he  was  without 
education  in  public  affairs,  without  experience  as  a  speaker 
or  any  of  the  natural  gifts  of  an  orator.  But  he  had  con 
victions.  He  believed  that,  under  a  Government  by  and 
for  all,  it  was  the  duty  of  all  to  study  and  to  understand 
their  relations  to  it  and  their  duties  and  obligations  under 


LIFE  AND  CHARACTER  OF  HENRY  WILSON.  75 

it,  and  in  that  sense  to  be  politicians — honest,  earnest, 
aggressive  politicians.  And  in  teaching  others  he  taught 
himself,  till  he  became  one  of  the  most  efficient  political 
teachers  and  leaders  in  his  generation.  The  logic  of  the 
schools  and  the  arts  of  the  rhetorician  he  never  studied 
and  never  knew,  but  of  the  logic  of  events  and  the  eternal 
fitness  of  things  he  seemed  to  have  intuitive  knowledge, 
and  in  the  enforcement  of  their  lessons  he  was  remarkably 
effective.  He  had  the  courage  of  his  convictions,  and  he 
followed  them,  sometimes,  though  seldom,  into  the  wrong, 
but  still  he  followed  them  fearlessly,  across  party  lines, 
into  strange  company,  into  seeming  inconsistencies,  and 
into  danger  if  need  be.  Wherever  they  led,  there  he  fol 
lowed. 

Mr.  WILSON  was  a  hater  of  slavery  and  every  sort  of 
oppression  and  infringement  on  human  rights  from  his 
boyhood.  He  could  not  have  been  otherwise  without 
being  false  to  himself  and  all  the  experiences  of  his  life. 
War  on  these  wrongs  became  to  him  a  mission,  and  he 
took  upon  himself  its  work  with  vows  and  covenants, 
never  faltering  so  long  as  there  was  work  to  do.  He  sub 
ordinated  to  it  all  party  ties  and  relations,  keeping  com 
pany  with  political  associates  and  acknowledging  fealty  to 
political  organizations  only  so  long  as  this  higher  purpose 
of  his  life  could,  in  his  opinion,  be  promoted  thereby. 
This  led  him  to  become  a  disturbing  element,  disorganiz 
ing  old  parties  and  organizing  new  ones.  He  was  a  revo 
lutionist  in  politics,  and  bore  a  conspicuous  part  in  every 


76  ADDRESS  BY  ME.  DAWES  ON  THE 

great  political  revolt  existing  organizations  have  encoun 
tered  in  his  time.  He  first  came  upon  the  stage  as  a  young 
whig  orator  in  the  great  political  revolution  of  1840,  and 
participated  actively  and  efficiently  in  the  memorable  cam 
paign  which  in  that  year  brought  the  whig  party  into 
power.  With  more  zeal,  as  he  grew  in  years  and  in 
strength,  did  he  lead  in  1848  in  the  organization  of  the 
free-soil  party  for  the  destruction  of  both  the  whig  and 
democratic  parties.  In  1851  and  1852  he  was  the  master 
spirit  of  a  coalition  between  the  free-soil  and  democratic 
parties  in  his  own  State  in  a  successful  campaign  against 
the  whig  party  of  that  State,  dislodging  it  from  power  and 
dividing  the  offices  between  the  allies,  placing  Mr.  Sunnier 
in  the  Senate  and  a  democrat  in  the  governor's  chair.  In 
1854,  he  was  one  of  the  leaders  in  the  organization  of  the 
American  party  of  that  day,  which  overwhelmed  in  a  com 
mon  defeat  the  whig,  democratic,  and  republican  parties, 
carrying  down,  by  his  own  efforts,  his  own  name  at  the 
head  of  the  republican  ticket  for  governor  of  the  State. 
By  this  party  he  was  himself  elected  to  the  Senate  of  the 
United  States.  In  1855  he  again  led,  in  the  councils  of 
that  same  American  party  at  Philadelphia,  a  revolt  which 
dismembered  and  disbanded  it  on  its  first  attempt  to  con 
trol  national  politics ;  and  in  the  following  year  he  was 
found  earnest  and  foremost  in  the  work  of  organizing  and 
preparing  the  present  national  republican  party  for  its  ulti 
mate  triumph  in  1860.  With  this  party  in  its  avowed 
work  he  continued  to  act  during  the  remainder  of  his  life. 


LIFE  AND  CHARACTER  OF  HENRY  WILSON.  77 

He  had  often  in  those  years  to  answer  the  charge  of  vacil 
lation  and  inconsistency  and  a  desire  for  office  and  power 
regardless  of  the  means  used  for  their  attainment.  He 
met  all  these  accusations  with  the  bold  announcement  that, 
with  him,  neither  place  nor  power  nor  party  was  anything 
but  means  to  an  end  beyond  and  above  them  all,  and  that 
he  would  never  seek  nor  serve  either  except  for  the  attain 
ment  of  that  end.  He  outlived  many  years  the  adverse 
criticisms  and  enmities  this  course  engendered ;  and,  as  in 
later  years,  amid  the  great  events  in  which  he  bore  so 
prominent  a  part,  his  untiring  zeal  and  absolute  devotion 
to  the  political  elevation  of  the  down-trodden  stood  out  to 
be  read  of  all  men,  the  general  public  judgment  accorded 
to  him  a  sincerity,  sagacity,  and  statesmanship  in  these 
frequent  changes  of  political  relations  which  were  not  uni 
versally  conceded  at  the  time  of  their  occurrence. 

Mr.  WILSON  rose  rapidly  from  his  first  entrance  into 
public  life  in  1840.  He  was  a  member  of  the  lower  house 
of  the  Massachusetts  Legislature  by  repeated  elections, 
four  times  a  senator,  and  twice  the  presiding  officer  of 
that  body.  He  was  also  a  leading  and  influential  mem 
ber,  among  the  ablest  men  of  the  State,  of  the  constitu 
tional  convention  of  1853.  He  was  several  times  candi 
date  of  the  party  with  which  he  acted  for  governor  of  the 
State  and  for  Representative  in  Congress.  In  1855,  in 
one  of  those  remarkable  political  revolutions  before 
alluded  to,  he  was  elected  Senator  of  the  United  States, 
and  took  his  seat  in  this  body  in  February  of  that  year. 


78  ADDRESS  BY  MB.  DAWES  ON  THE 

By  repeated  and  nearly  unanimous  re-election  lie  held  the 
office  of  Senator  eighteen  years,  and  resigned  it  only  to 
assume  the  duties  of  the  office  of  Vice-President,  to  which 
he  had  been  elected  in  1872,  and  which  he  held  till  his 
death  in  the  National  Capitol  on  the  morning  of  the  22d 
of  November  last. 

How  he  acquitted  himself  in  the  many  positions  of  pub 
lic  trust  and  responsibility  to  which  he  was  repeatedly 
called  by  his  own  State  the  people  of  Massachusetts  bear 
testimony  to-day  in  the  sincere  mourning  which  fills  all 
hearts,  and  in  the  universal  feeling  of  irreparable  loss 
which  finds  expression  in  all  her  borders.  How  he  bore 
himself  in  this  broader  field  and  under  the  weightier  re 
sponsibilities  and  graver  duties  which  the  place  and  the 
times  devolved  upon  him  is  personally  known  to  many  of 
you,  Senators,  before  whom  he  went  in  and  out  daily  in 
the  patient  and  self-sacrificing  performance  of  the  work 
allotted  him,  and  is  now  commended  by  a  universal  pub 
lic  judgment.  He  entered  this  body  six  years  before  the 
war  ;  years  of  civil  strife  and  commotion  ripening  into  re 
bellion  ;  years  big  with  the  great  events  and  greater  con 
sequences  of  that  national  conflict.  On  the  one  side  were 
arrayed  Jefferson  Davis,  Toombs,  Hunter,  Butler,  Benja 
min,  and  their  compeers,  if  not  as  yet  menacing,  certainly 
intense,  bitter,  and  uncompromising.  With  them,  by 
party  affiliation,  though  not  in  sympathy,  and  vainly 
struggling  against  the  current  of  party  policy,  were  Cass 
and  Douglas.  On  the  other  side,  with  whom  WILSON 


LIFE  AND  CHARACTER  OF  HENRY  WILSON.  79 

took  his  place,  were,  in  the  early  morning  of  the  struggle, 
Clayton,  Crittenden,  and  Bell ;  and,  all  through  its  heat 
and  burden,  Wade,  Fessenden,  Trumbull,  Hale,  and  his 
own  great  colleague,  Sumner.  The  world  has  seldom, 
if  ever,  witnessed  a  more  imposing  array.  Among  the 
questions  debated  and  determined  were  the  repeal  of  the 
Missouri  compromise,  the  Dred  Scott  decision,  the  forcing 
of  slavery  into  Kansas  and  a  government  of  slave-holders 
upon  her  people,  the  hunting  of  fugitives  from  slavery  in 
free  States,  and  other  kindred  measures,  involving  the 
very  existence  of  the  Republic.  Never  has  the  world  lis 
tened  to  a  debate  on  which  were  staked  such  momentous 
issues.  Among  these  great  men  and  in  these  great  argu 
ments  Mr.  WILSON  was  neither  silent  nor  weak,  but  earned 
a  national  reputation.  He  was  placed  at  the  head  of  the 
Military  Committee  of  this  body  at  the  beginning  of  the 
war,  when  its  responsibilities  and  duties  assumed  an  im 
portance  never  known  before.  The  records  of  the  Senate 
and  the  contemporaneous  testimony  of  the  high  officials 
who  leaned  on  this  committee  for  support  in  the  exigen 
cies  of  the  war  furnish  ample  evidence  of  the  great  abil 
ity  and  marvelous  industry  with  which  he  met  the  diffi 
cult  and  delicate  questions  and  incessant  labors  of  this  new 
position. 

The  close  of  the  war  brought  to  Mr.  WILSON  no  release 
from  active  public  service.  He  supported  earnestly  and 
most  efficiently  that  series  of  great  measures  rendered 
necessary  in  the  rehabilitation  of  the  rebel  States,  and 


80  ADDRESS  BY  ME.  DAWES  ON  THE 

which  ultimately  wrought  those  grand  changes  in  the  or 
ganic  law  of  the  land  that  will  ever  mark  this  period  as 
an  epoch  in  the  world's  history.  Some  of  the  most  im 
portant  of  these  measures  originated  with  him,  and  in  the 
final  shape  and  reach  of  others  may  be  traced  the  wise 
and  practical  counsel,  never  stumbling  over  forms  nor 
missing  the  substance,  which  so  characterized  all  his  work. 
The  complete  history  of  the  Republic  during  the  eventful 
years  of  his  service  here — a  history  not  yet  written — will 
alone  do  justice  to  the  indefatigable  endeavors  and  the 
broad  and  patriotic  statesmanship  of  HENRY  WILSON,  and 
to  its  judgment  his  name  and  fame  may  be  safely  com 
mitted. 

The  personal  character  of  Mr.  WILSON  was  full  of  noble 
qualities,  endearing  him  to  his  friends  while  living  and 
making  his  memory  a  constant  delight.  Kindness  of  heart 
seemed  to  mellow  his  whole  nature.  There  was  in  him 
neither  selfishness,  nor  envy,  nor  hate,  and  only  generos 
ity,  charity,  and  good- will.  He  would  empty  his  pockets 
and  borrow  of  his  neighbor  to  relieve  suffering  humanity 
stretching  out  its  hands  at  the  corners  of  the  streets.  He 
would  toil  and  travel,  day  and  night,  without  recompense 
or  hope  of  reward,  if  thereby  he  could  contribute  to  lift  the 
humble  and  the  lowly  to  manhood  and  its  opportunities. 
With  physical  strength  and  mental  vigor  was  spent  for 
others  his  substance  also,  and  when  he  died  he  left  in  all 
less  than  the  value  of  one  year's  salary.  Underneath  all 
these  gentle  qualities  there  lived  a  personal  courage  which 


LIFE  AND   CHARACTER  OF  HENRY  WILSON.  81 

never  quailed  in  the  face  of  danger.  When,  under  a  dis 
pensation  now,  thank  God,  forever  passed  away,  his  dis 
tinguished  colleague,  for  words  spoken  in  debate,  fell  upon 
the  floor  of  the  Senate  Chamber  beneath  the  bludgeon  of 
one  mad  with  the  fury  of  the  times,  Mr.  WILSON,  though 
one  of  the  youngest  Senators  in  service,  and  yet  hardly 
known  to  those  among  whom  he  stood,  denounced  in  his 
place  the  assault  as  "brutal,  murderous,  and  cowardly." 
And  then,  in  answer  to  a  challenge  from  the  assailant  him 
self,  he  had  the  greater  courage  to  defy  both  him  and  the 
barbarous  code  behind  which  such  men  skulk,  in  words 
which  will  live  as  long  as  the  history  of  those  dark  times 
and  darker  deeds  shall  be  read  of  men.  From  that  hour 
till  the  day  broke  upon  a  regenerated  Republic  he  carried 
his  life  in  his  hand ;  but  never,  to  save  that  life,  did  he 
deviate  a  hair's  breadth  from  the  line  of  his  duty. 

The  gratitude  of  the  commonwealth  whose  commission 
in  the  public  service  he  bore  so  long  and  with  such  signal 
fidelity  arid  ability,  and  her  grief  at  his  loss,  would  bid  me 
speak  many  things  I  must  leave  unsaid.  A  personal  ad 
miration  of  his  life  and  work,  joined  with  an  uninterrupted 
and  confiding  friendship  of  many  years,  has  already  ex 
tended  the  language  of  eulogy  beyond  the  proper  limits 
of  this  occasion.  The  rest  must  be  left  to  the  history  of 
the  times  in  which  he  lived,  and  of  the  Republic  to  whose 
true  glory  his  life  was  consecrated. 

Mr.  President,  it  is  appointed  unto  all  men  once  to  die, 
and  an  untimely  death  overtakes  no  one,  however  inscruta- 


11 


82  ADDRESS  BY  MB.  DAWES. 

ble  to  mortal  vision  is  the  dispensation.  But  we  seem  to 
see  clearly,  even  now,  that  this  great  change  came  to  Mr. 
WILSON  in  the  fullness  of  time.  In  the  fierce  battle  of 
life  he  had  won  the  victory.  The  work  to  which  he  had 
set  apart  that  life  was  done;  for  his  countrymen  were  all 
free,  were  all  equal  before  the  law,  and  were  at  peace  with 
the  world  and  with  one  another.  He  died  full  of  years, 
of  honors,  and  in  the  blessed  hope  of  a  glorious  immor 
tality.  His  mission  here  had  indeed  ended. 

We  cannot  turn,  however,  from  the  contemplation  of  a 
life  so  humble  and  lowly  in  its  beginning,  so  full  of  pa 
triotic  endeavor  and  noble  achievements  through  all  its 
progress,  and  so  illustrious  in  its  end,  without  reverently 
exclaiming,  Surely  the  ways  of  man  are  fashioned  of  God  ! 

And  now,  Mr.  President,  as  a  further  mark  of  respect 
to  the  distinguished  dead,  so  recently  our  Presiding  Officer, 
I  move  that  the  Senate  adjourn. 

The  motion  was  agreed  to ;  and  (at  two  o'clock  and  fifty- 
one  minutes  p.  m.)  the  Senate  adjourned. 


PROCEEDINGS 


HOUSE   OF   REPRESENTATIVES. 


MESSAGE  FROM  THE  SENATE. 

A  message  from  the  Senate,  by  Mr.  Sympson,  one  of 
their  clerks,  communicated  to  the  House  the  resolutions 
of  the  Senate  on  the  announcement  of  the  death  of  HENRY 
WILSON,  late  Vice-President  of  the  United  States. 

The  SPEAKER.  The  Chair  will  direct  that  the  message 
received  from  the  Senate  in  regard  to  the  death  of  the 
late  Vice-President  be  now  read. 

Mr.  HOLMAN.  I  ask  unanimous  consent  that  during 
the  consideration  of  the  resolutions  from  the  Senate,  now 
about  to  be  brought  to  the  attention  of  the  House,  the 
privileges  of  the  floor  be  extended  to  the  delegation  of 
editors  from  Indiana  who  are  now  visiting  this  Capitol. 
I  believe  this  is  in  conformity  with  precedent. 

There  being  no  objection,  it  was  ordered  accordingly. 

The  Clerk  read  as  follows: 

IN  THE  SENATE  OF  THE  UNITED  STATES, 

January  21,  1876. 

Resolved,  That  the  Senate  has  received  with  profound  sorrow 
the  announcement  of  the  death  of  HENRY  WILSON,  late  Vice- 


84  MESSAGE  FROM  THE  SENATE. 

President  of  the  United  States  and  President  of  the  Senate,  who 
had  been  for  eighteen  years  of  consecutive  service  a  member  of 
this  body. 

Resolved,  That  business  be  now  suspended  that  the  friends  and 
associates  of  the  deceased  may  pay  fitting  tribute  to  his  public 
and  private  virtues. 

Resolved,  That  the  Secretary  communicate  these  resolutions  to 
the  House  of  Eepresentatives. 

Mr.  WAEREN.     Mr.  Speaker,  I  move  the  adoption  of  the 
resolutions  which  I  send  to  the  Clerk's  desk. 
The  Clerk  read  as  follows: 

Resolved^  That  the  House  of  Representatives  has  received  with 
profound  sorrow  the  announcement  of  the  death  of  HENRY  WIL 
SON,  late  Yice-President  of  the  United  States. 

Resolved^  That  business  be  now  suspended  to  allow  fitting 
tributes  to  be  paid  to  his  public  and  private  virtues ;  and  that,  as 
a  further  mark  of  respect  to  the  memory  of  the  deceased,  the 
House  at  the  close  of  such  remarks  shall  adjourn. 


Address  by    Mr.  Warren,  of    Massachusetts. 


Mr.  Speaker,  again,  and  seemingly  all  too  soon,  Mas 
sachusetts  calls  upon  the  Houses  of  Congress  to  pause  in 
their  customary  labors  and  join  her  in  paying  tribute  to 
the  memory  of  one  of  her  departed  statesmen.  This  time 
she  has  to  mourn  the  loss  of  him  who  had  been  honored 
by  the  highest  office  in  the  Federal  Government  attained 
by  any  of  her  citizens  during  the  last  half  century,  HENRY 
WILSON,  the  eighteenth  Vice-President  of  the  United 
States. 

Born  at  Farmington,  in  the  State  of  New  Hampshire, 
on  the  16th  day  of  February,  1812,  his  early  life  was 
passed  in  unceasing  toil.  Yet  from  childhood  he  had 
such  a  thirst  for  knowledge  that  when  at  his  maturity  he 
left  his  birth-place,  he  had  not  only  read  but  had  stored 
in  his  memory,  where  it  remained  ever  after  available  for 
instant  use,  whatever  the  best  authorities  upon  English 
and  American  history  up  to  that  time  had  written. 

In  1833  Mr.  WILSON  removed  to  Natick,  in  Massachu 
setts,  and  made  that  place  his  home.  There  he  was  mar 
ried,  and  there  his  remains  now  repose  with  those  of  his 
wife  and  son.  His  business  life,  perhaps  the  least  im 
portant  part  of  his  history,  was  confined  entirely  to  the 


86  ADDRESS  BY  MR.  WARREN  ON  THE 

manufacture  of  boots  and  shoes,  a  branch  of  industry  then 
in  its  infancy  in  the  part  of  Massachusetts  in  which  he 
resided.  But  in  business  he  always  exhibited  the  same 
patience  of  labor  and  faithfulness  in  performance  which 
characterized  all  his  undertakings.  He  was  by  no  means 
the  least  efficient  among  those  whose  ingenuity  and  exer 
tions  brought  that  manufacture  up  to  its  present  vast  pro 
portions. 

It  is,  however,  in  his  public  life  that  we  are  more 
peculiarly  interested.  He  took  an  active  part  in  the  can 
vass  of  1840,  which  resulted  in  the  election  of  General 
Harrison  to  the  Presidency,  and  was  himself  elected  in 
that  year  to  the  Massachusetts  House  of  Representatives. 
From  that  time  forward  his  name  has  never  been  discon 
nected  from  the  history  of  Massachusetts  politics,  except 
so  far  as  it  is  more  intimately  associated  with  the  politics 
of  the  whole  country.  Once  defeated,  he  was  in  1844  a 
member  of  the  State  Senate,  and  was  re-elected  in  1845. 
In  this  latter  year  he  presided  over  a  convention  assem 
bled  to  oppose  the  admission  of  Texas  into  the  Union. 
In  1846  he  returned  to  the  House  of  Representatives,  hav 
ing  declined  a  renomination  to  the  Senate.  In  1848  he 
was  a  member  of  the  national  convention  which  nominated 
General  Taylor.  This  nomination  was  effected  against 
the  strenuous  opposition  of  Mr.  WILSON,  who  felt  that 
Mr.  Webster  should  have  received  the  honor.  He  conse 
quently  was  zealous  in  opposing  the  election  of  General 
Taylor,  and  took  part  in  the  calling  and  organizing  of 


LIFE  AND  CHARACTER  OF  HENRY  WILSON.  87 

the  Buffalo  convention  which  nominated  Martin  Van 
Buren  for  President -and  Charles  Francis  Adams  for  Vice- 
President.  He  was  chairman  of  the  free-soil  State  com 
mittee  in  1849.  In  1850  he  again  sat  in  the  State  House 
of  Representatives,  and  was  the  candidate  of  his  party  for 
Speaker.  In  the  fall  of  that  year  he  was  one  of  the  origi 
nators  and  chief  supporters  of  the  coalition  between  the 
free-soil  and  democratic  parties,  which  elected  Mr.  Bout- 
well  governor,  Mr.  WILSON  himself  to  the  State  Senate, 
and  made  him  president  of  that  body,  and,  after  a  severe 
contest,  sent  Charles  Sumner  to  the  Senate  of  the  United 
States.  In  1852  he  was  a  delegate  to  the  national  con 
vention  of  the  free-soil  party  held  at  Pittsburgh,  Pennsyl 
vania;  was  chairman  of  the  national  free-soil  committee; 
failed  of  an  election  to  Congress  by  less  than  a  hundred 
votes,  and  was  again  president  of  the  Massachusetts  sen 
ate.  His  address  of  welcome  to  Louis  Kossuth,  made  the 
same  year  as  chairman  of  a  legislative  committee,  won 
the  applause  of  all  parties.  In  1853  he  was  a  member  of 
and  took  a  prominent  part  in  a  convention  called  to  revise 
the  constitution  of  the  commonwealth.  Here  he  made 
his  influence  felt,  although  the  convention  contained  the 
ablest  men  in  the  State  of  every  party.  In  the  same 
year  he  was  the  candidate  of  his  party  for  governor,  and 
again  in  1854,  but  was  never  elected  to  that  office.  In 
the  latter  year  he  was  actively  engaged  in  organizing  the 
opposition  to  the  repeal  of  the  Missouri  compromise.  In 
that  year,  also,  he  joined  the  native  American  or  know- 


ADDRESS  BY  MR.  WARREN  ON  THE 


nothing  party,  as  it  was  called,  which  elected  its  candi 
date  for  governor  and  a  large  majority  in  both  branches 
of  the  Legislature.  That  Legislature  met  in  January, 
1 855,  and,  on  the  resignation  of  Mr.  Everett,  elected  Mr. 
WILSON  to  the  United  States  Senate.  He  took  his  seat  in 
that  body  on  the  10th  day  of  February,  1855,  and  con 
tinued  to  occupy  it  until  he  assumed  the  office  of  Vice- 
President,  March  4,  1873. 

Time  would  fail  me  were  I  to  attempt  to  recount  his 
labors  as  a  member  of  the  Senate.  Suffice  it  to  say  that 
when  the  history  of  its  memorable  doings,  for  the  last 
twenty  memorable  years,  shall  come  to  be  written,  there 
will  be  no  chapter  of  the  whole  record  that  will  not  per 
force  mention  the  name  and  speak  of  the  labors  of  HENRY 
WILSON,  of  Massachusetts.  And  the  history  of  the  party 
to  which  he  belonged,  and  at  whose  birth  he  assisted,  will 
make  mention  of  no  man  who  did  more  to  lead  that  party 
from  its  early  adversity  and  defeat  to  its  final  triumph 
and  long  tenure  of  power;  no  man  who  labored  harder, 
through  good  and  through  evil  report,  with  brain  and 
tongue  and  hand  in  the  cause  to  which  he  was  devoted; 
no  man  who  was  keener  in  foreseeing  and  surer  in  taking 
the  precise  step  in  which  the  people  were  ready  to  follow; 
no  man  who  understood  better  how  to  lead  forward  his 
party  from  position  to  position  until,  through  their  sup 
port,  every  measure  of  policy  which  he  deemed  essential 
was  finally  established,  than  HENRY  WILSON,  of  Massa 
chusetts.  And  so  it  happened  that  before  and  during 


LIFE  AND  CHARACTER  OF  HENRY  WILSON.  89 

and  since  our  civil  conflict  he  was  all  the  time  one  of  the 
feremost  leaders,  one  of  the  most  trusted  advisers,  among 
the  men  who  in  those  periods  in  the  main  shaped  the 
destiny  of  our  people. 

With  this  brief  sketch  of  the  wonderfully  successful 
career  of  Mr.  WILSON  I  might  pause.  But  were  I  to  do 
so  I  might  leave  the  impression  that  his  life  was  hardly 
an  exceptional  one  in  this  new  and  growing  country. 
There  are,  it  is  true,  innumerable  instances  in  each  suc 
ceeding  generation  of  men  who,  from  poverty  and  depriva 
tion,  have  worked  their  way  upward  to  high  position,  and 
meanwhile  have  educated  themselves  sufficiently  to  be 
enabled  to  bear  off  their  honors  bravely  and  do  credit  to 
themselves  and  the  State.  But  Mr.  WILSON  had  to  con 
tend  against  no  ordinary  odds.  His  was  not  the  lot  of 
him  who  in  a  new  country,  by  simple  force  of  character, 
energy,  and  industry,  becomes  a  leader  among  the  hardy 
pioneers  who  surround  him.  He  went  a  self-taught  youth 
from  his  rustic  home  into  the  most  populous  portion  of 
one  of  the  oldest  States  in  the  Union.  He  took  up  his 
abode  in  the  immediate  vicinity  of  our  most  ancient  seat 
of  learning.  He  chose  as  his  political  associates  a  party 
comprising  probably  two-thirds  of  the  people  of  Massa 
chusetts  and  an  equal  proportion  of  those  who  might  truly 
be  called  the  educated  and  cultivated  men  in  a  community 
behind  none  on  this  continent  in  intelligence  and  refine 
ment.  It  was  with  the  picked  men  in  such  a  community 
and  in  such  a  party  that  he  was  brought  into  comparison 


12  w 


90  ADDRESS  BY  ME.  WARREN  ON  THE 

and  finally  into  competition.  And  it  seems  to  me  the 
great  success  of  his  life  that  he  took  a  front  rank  among 
such  competitors  and  finally  superseded  the  foremost  of 
them  in  the  leadership  of  his  party. 

He  must,  then,  have  been  possessed  of  some  unusual 
abilities  besides  mere  intellectual  power,  general  knowl 
edge,  the  gift  of  eloquence,  or  personal  character.  These 
were  possessed  in  sufficient  degree  by  hundreds  of  his 
compeers.  True,  he  was  not  lacking  in  energy ;  he  shrunk 
from  no  labor;  his  mind  worked  easily  and  he  rarely 
failed  to  detect  the  vulnerable  point  in  his  adversary's 
position;  he  had  no  dearth  of  general  information,  and 
even  in  his  early  days  his  style  of  oratory  was  far  above 
the  average.  But  over  and  above  all  this  he  had  in  a 
pre-eminent  degree  two  especial  qualifications  for  political 
leadership.  These  were,  first,  an  intimate  acquaintance 
with  all  the  facts  of  our  past  and  current  political  history. 
A  memory  naturally  tenacious  had  been  trained  and 
crammed  to  hold  this  knowledge  of  political  facts  always 
at  command.  This  kind  of  knowledge  has  not  of  late 
been  common  in  Massachusetts.  One  effect  of  the  course 
of  education  in  that  State  during  the  last  third  of  a  cen 
tury,  combined  doubtless  with  other  causes,  has  been  to 
produce  a  distaste  for  political  life  among  men  of  the 
highest  education,  and  an  aversion  to  any  great  familiar 
ity  with  the  details  of  American  political  history. 

In  the  second  place,  Mr.  WILSON  had  no  superior  as  a 
party  organizer.  There  may  be  some  who  will  deem  the 


LIFE  AND  CHARACTER  OF  HENRY  WILSON.  91 

possession  of  the  faculty  for  organizing  men  into  a  com 
pact  and  formidable  body  as  not  a  subject  for  eulogy. 
Such  is  not  my  opinion.  English  and  American  history 
for  centuries'  has  been  the  history  of  parties.  No  other 
instrumentality  has  been,  none  is  likely  to  be  devised 
which  will  supplant  them  as  the  ready  and  necessary 
means  for  molding  the  policy  of  the  state.  In  a  country 
where  new  questions  are  constantly  arising  and  former 
ones  becoming  obsolete,  the  organizer  is  scarcely,  if  at  all, 
less  important  than  the  thinker.  The  student  will  spend 
his  life  in  the  seclusion  of  his  closet;  the  orator,  be  he 
ever  so  impassioned  and  eloquent,  will  arouse  only  dis 
cord  and  ill-temper,  until  he  appears  who  can  transform 
their  speculations  and  declamation  into  a  body  of  meas 
ures  to  the  support  of  which  he  can  bring  a  potent  array 
of  his  fellow-men.  It  was  only  through  the  organizing 
skill  of  HENRY  WILSON  that  it  became  possible  for  Charles 
Summer  to  pass  from  a  private  station  to  the  Senate  of  the 
United  States.  If  those  who  claim  to  be  leaders  of 
thought  and  to  possess  superiority  in  culture  and  knowl 
edge  in  our  community  desire  or  expect  hereafter  to  re 
sume  that  guidance  and  control  over  our  affairs  which 
they  have  of  late  been  wont  to  complain  are  not  conceded 
to  them,  they  must,  first,  in  knowledge  of  and  familiarity 
with  national  and  local  politics,  and  secondly,  in  learning 
how  to  organize  and  direct  masses  of  men,  take  a  lesson 
from  the  life  of  HENRY  WILSON,  of  Massachusetts. 

With  all  these  qualifications,  however,  continued  sue- 


92  ADDRESS  BY  MR.  WARREN  ON  THE 

cess  would  rarely  fall  to  the  lot  of  any  man  who  had  not 
some  great  purpose  to  accomplish.  Knowledge  of  affairs 
and  skill  in  party  organization  would  be  acquirements 
dangerous  to  the  public  weal  unless  'accompanied  by  a 
high  sense  of  honor  and  unselfish  devotion  to  a  noble 
cause.  In  the  case  of  Mr.  WILSON  no  one  needs  to  be 
told  that  the  sentiment  that  controlled  him  was  the  anti- 
slavery  sentiment,  which  he  shared  in  common  with  al 
most  all  the  people  of  his  State  and  section.  But  while 
with  most  it  was  for  a  long  time  only  a  sentiment,  with 
him  it  became  the  pivot  on  which  his  political  conduct 
turned.  And  without  even  an  'allusion  to  the  measures 
and  events  which  have  for  many  years  been  uppermost 
in  the  minds  of  us  all,  without  speculating  upon  what 
might  have  been  done  or  what  avoided,  it  is  not  too  much 
to  say  that  at  this  time  and  in  this  place,  where  the  people 
of  every  State  in  the  Union  are  once  again  fully  repre 
sented,  there  is  no  man  who  will  hesitate  to  do  full  justice 
to  the  purity  of  motive,  the  sincerity  of  conviction,  and 
the  elevation  of  sentiment  of  the  earlier  New  England 
anti-slavery  men. 

But  it  is  the  crowning  glory  of  Vice-President  WILSON'S 
life  that  while  he  never  wavered  in  his  hostility  to  an  in 
stitution  which  in  his  view  was  a  violation  of  human  rights 
and  a  standing  insult  to  the  dignity  of  labor,  he  never 
permitted  himself  to  cherish  any  bitterness  of  feeling  to 
ward  his  political  antagonists,  even  after  the  angry  con 
flict  of  arms  had  for  a  time  almost  obliterated  all  kindly 


LIFE  AND  CHARACTER  OF  HENRY  WILSON.  93 

feelings  between  the  divided  sections.  Many  and  many 
are  the  men  in  all  parts  of  the  South  who  in  their  hour  of 
distress  have  found  in  him  a  friend  and  benefactor,  and 
here  almost  within  reach  of  my  hand  are  those  who  bear 
cheerful  testimony  to  his  efforts  in  their  behalf  whereby 
their  prison  doors  were  opened  and  they  themselves  re 
turned  to  their  homes  and  friends. 

And  so  in  a  more  public  manner  in  the  last  year  of  his 
life,  when  he  felt  that  his  efforts  in  behalf  of  human  free 
dom  and  the  elevation  of  labor  (for  he  always  united  the 
two  in  his  thoughts)  had  reached  their  full  fruition,  he  set 
himself  at  work  to  ascertain  what  might  be  done  to  allevi 
ate  the  distresses  of  the  Southern  people.  Forgetting  the 
politician  and  the  partisan,  he  remembered  only  that  he 
was  a  man  and  a  Christian.  And  thus  it  happened  that 
when  he  came  to  die  he  left  behind  no  personal  or  politi 
cal  enemy,  but  was  at  peace  with  all  mankind.  A  re 
united  nation  in  mourning  sympathy  followed  his  mortal 
part  to  its  final  resting-place,  and  to-day  expresses  a  com 
mon  grief  in  a  common  loss.  He  died  on  the  23d  of  No 
vember,  within  the  walls  of  the  Capitol — a  most  fitting 
place.  Bereft  of  wife  and  child,  he  could  claim  kindred 
but  with  the  Republic,  and,  as  it  were,  in  her  embrace  he 
sank  to  sleep.  Upon  him,  self-taught,  self- trained,  but 
who  had  attained  nearly  all  the  honors  his  native  land 
could  bestow,  speaking,  however  unworthily,  for  the  dis 
trict  in  which  he  lived,  and  for  the  university  which  is  its 
pride  and  boast,  I  can  freely  bestow  that  meed  of  praise 


94  ADDRESS  BY  MR.  WARREN  ON  THE 

which  the  greatest  of  Eoman  orators  was  constrained  to 
render  to  the  foremost  of  Roman  soldiers,  "Fuit  inillo  in- 
genium,  ratio,  memoria,  literatura,  cogitatio,  diligentia" 

And  speaking  for  no  single  district,  nor  yet  for  any- 
single  country,  but  in  the  name  of  our  common  humanity, 
I  can,  with  the  common  consent,  place  a  still  higher  trib 
ute,  which  Roman  orator  and  Roman  soldier  knew  not  of, 
the  crown  of  that  Christian  charity  which  "sufferethlong 
and  is  kind,  envieth  not,  vaunteth  not  itself,  is  not  puffed 
up,  doth  not  behave  itself  unseemly,"  which  "thinkethno 
evil,  rejoiceth  not  in  iniquity  but  rejoiceth  in  the  truth," 
charity  which  "never  faileth,"  upon  the  tomb  of  HENRY 
WILSON,  of  Massachusetts. 


LIFE  AND  CHARACTER  OF  HENRY  WILSON.  95 


\>-^; 

Address  by  Mr.  "fJarris,  of   Massachusetts. 


I  rise  to  second  the  resolutions  in  honor  of  HENRY 
WILSON,  late  Vice-President  of  the  United  States,  which 
have  just  been  presented  to  this  House  by  my  friend  and 
colleague  from  Massachusetts,  and  in  a  few  words  to  urge 
their  adoption. 

Standing  here,  Mr.  Speaker,  in  the  presence  of  so  many 
distinguished  gentlemen  who  had  the  privilege  of  familiar 
social,  private,  and  public  intercourse  with  Mr.  WILSON, 
who  learned  his  ambition,  his  aspiration,  and  his  hopes, 
who  saw  him  in  his  daily  walks  and  heard  his  conversa 
tion,  I  know  how  feeble  will  be  the  tribute  which  I  must 
pay  to  him.  Nevertheless,  I  bring  my  humble  offering  to 
his  grave. 

He  was,  as  has  been  already  said,  a  man  of  the  people. 
He  rose  from  the  humble  walks  of  life  by  great  energy, 
by  great  intelligence,  to  the  highest  position  in  the  coun 
try  save  one.  He  died  in  the  possession  and  enjoyment 
of  the  second  honor  of  the  Republic. 

Mr.  WILSON  understood  the  people.  The  people  under 
stood  him.  He  seemed  to  understand  the  voice  of  the 
people  and  their  judgment  before  it  was  uttered.  He 


96  ADDRESS  BY  MR.   HARRIS  ON  THE 

stood  for  many  years  as  if  with  his  hand  upon  the  popu 
lar  pulse.  He  felt  every  heart-beat  of  the  people  and 
announced  their  coming  judgment. 

Mr.  WILSON  was  a  man  of  whom  I  think  it  may  be  said 
that  he  was  unsurpassed  in  private  virtue.  As  a  citizen 
for  the  purity  of  his  private  life,  as  a  politician  for  the 
purity  of  his  purposes,  he  had  no  superior.  However 
men  may  differ  from  him  in  the  views  which  he  enter 
tained,  however  bitter  at  times  may  have  been  the  con 
tests  in  which  he  engaged,  I  think  to-day  there  are  no 
persons  within  the  sound  of  my  voice  who  will  say  they 
do  not  believe  that  he  was  sincere  and  honest  in  every 
public  and  private  act. 

No  man  can  speak  of  HENRY  WILSON  without  making 
reference  to  the  relations  which  he  occupied  to  party  and 
to  the  Republic.  To  speak  of  him  otherwise  than  as  an 
advocate  of  liberty  and  as  an  adversary  and  opponent  of 
human  slavery  would  be  to  do  injustice  to  his  memory. 
He  commenced  early  in  his  political  career  as  an  advocate 
of  the  slave.  At  first  he  only  sought  to  prevent  the  exten 
sion  of  human  slavery.  At  last,  when  war  burst  upon  the 
country,  he  became  the  determined  advocate  of  the  abo 
lition  of  that  institution.  I  would  not  refer  to  any  act  of 
his  which  might  call  back  one  bitter  thought  to  any  gen 
tleman  upon  this  floor,  but  he  believed  that  the  Constitu 
tion  of  his  country  was  a  free  Constitution,  and,  with 
Washington  and  Jefferson,  that  the  institution  of  slavery 
was  contrary  to  the  genius  of  the  Republic.  And  for 


LIFE  AND  CHARACTER  OF  HENRY  WILSON.  97 

many  years  he  battled  faithfully,  as  he  believed,  in  the 
cause  of  the  human  race. 

He  saw,  Mr.  Speaker,  nothing  in  the  Constitution  which 
needed  amendment,  and  could  his  voice  have  been  heard 
— could  those  gentlemen  in  the  South  who  to-day  are 
willing  to  pay  tribute  to  the  memory  of  HENRY  WILSON — 
could  they  have  heard  his  voice  when  he  urged  gradual 
emancipation;  could  they  have  believed  him  then;  could 
they  have  found  in  him  then,  as  they  do  now,  the  faithful 
and  honest  man — the  change  which  had  been  decreed  by 
the  Almighty  power  would  have  come  without  shock  or 
disaster,  but  with  benefaction  alike  to  master  and  slave. 

Mr.  WILSON,  as  a  politician,  pressed  his  views  upon  the 
public  with  persistency  and  zeal,  but  I  do  not  think  he 
could  properly  be  called  a  belligerent  man.  He  did  not 
so  much  undertake  to  convince  and  convert  his  enemies 
as  to  concentrate  and  combine  his  friends  and  sympa 
thizers  into  one  grand  power,  with  which  to  execute  his 
purposes.  He,  therefore,  had  few  personal  controversies 
in  his  life,  few  personal  encounters.  I  think  I  may  say 
he  had  as  few  personal  enemies  as  any  public  man  of  his 
time.  Indeed,  I  doubt  whether  he  can  be  said  to  have 
had  any  personal  enemies. 

When  war  burst  upon  the  country,  Mr.  WILSON  left 
nothing  undone  or  unattempted  which  he  believed  would 
lead  up  to  the  triumph  of  the  Government  and  the 
armies  of  the  country.  He  was  not  a  trifler  in  war  or 
peace,  and  when  war  did  come,  it  was  with  him  war  to 


13  w 


98  ADDRESS  BY  MB.  HARRIS  ON  THE 

the  knife.  But  when  the  war  was  over,  he  was  kind,  for 
giving,  and  affectionate.  To  the  poor  victims  of  war  his 
heart  overflowed  with  pity;  with  the  tenderness  of  a 
woman  he  wept  as  he  staunched  the  wounds  and  assuaged 
the  woes  of  war. 

After  the  close  of  that  sad  period  he  proved  to  the  people 
of  the  North  and  South  that  he  had  no  hostility  to  the 
men  whom  he  believed  the  institution  of  slavery  had 
cursed.  For  them  he  had  nothing  but  kindness  and  affec 
tion.  He  welcomed  them  back,  asking  only,  when  they 
returned  to  live  with  him  under  a  redeemed  and  purified 
Constitution,  that  they  would  come  with  a  sincere  deter 
mination  honestly  and  zealously  to  work  with  him  for  the 
glory  of  the  country. 

Mr.  WILSON  died  in  the  Capitol  of  his  country;  a  most 
fitting  place.  He  died  after  probably  having  accomplished 
all  that  was  left  to  him  to  accomplish.  He  died;  and  I 
think  he  receives  to-day  the  fittest  eulogy  from  the  people 
of  the  country,  the  people  of  his  own  class,  the  humble — 
for  Mr.  WILSON  never  forgot  that  he  was  from  the  poor, 
that  his  origin  was  among  the  poor  and  the  humble — and 
the  proudest  eulogy  which  goes  up  is  that  incense  which 
rises  from  the  hearts  of  the  humble  and  the  poor. 

Now,  Mr.  Speaker,  lest  I  shall  trespass  too  long  upon 
the  House,  I  hasten  to  conclude.  I  have  spoken  of  HENRY 
WILSON  only  as  a  national  man.  Massachusetts  to-day 
mourns  HENRY  WILSON,  and  Massachusetts,  Mr.  Speaker, 
has  cause  for  sorrow.  John  A.  Andrew,  Charles  Sumner, 


LIFE  AND  CHARACTER  OF  HENRY  WILSON.  99 

and  now  HENRY  WILSON;  HENRY  WILSON  the  last  of  the 
grand  trio.  HENRY  WILSON  had  the  confidence  of  the 
people  of  Massachusetts.  He  had  their  love,  and  they 
bore  him  upon  their  arms  into  the  office  of  the  Vice- 
President  of  the  United  States.  He  was  their  represent 
ative,  and  spoke  their  voice;  and  as  they  gather  his 
remains  to  their  final  resting-place  they  treasure  his  mem 
ory,  and  they  will  transmit  his  fair  example  to  their  sons, 
and  point  to  it  as  worthy  of  imitation  and  emulation  for 
the  humble  and  the  poor,  and  for  their  inspiration. 

Mr.  Speaker,  John  A.  Andrew,  at  the  opening  of  the 
war,  during  the  struggle,  and  at  its  close,  was  the  governor 
of  that  State.  Charles  Sumner  and  HENRY  WILSON  spoke 
her  voice  in  the  Senate  of  the  United  States.  And  I  think, 
sir,  it  is  no  arrogance  to  say  that  the  utterance  of  those 
three  of  her  noble  sons,  now  all  departed,  the  utterance  of 
those  three  was  the  true  utterance  of  the  commonwealth 
of  Massachusetts,  of  the  nation,  and  of  the  age  in  which 
they  lived.  Charles  Sumner  passed  away  at  the  most 
fitting  and  proper  period,  perhaps,  for  his  death.  He  had 
arrived  at  the  highest  honors.  He  had  accomplished  all 
there  was  for  him  to  do  and  he  passed  away;  but  Mr. 
Speaker,  not  until  he  lifted  his  voice  to  welcome  back  to 
the  protection  of  the  Constitution  and  into  the  fold  of  the 
Republic  every  man  who  had  left  it  during  the  war  of  the 
rebellion.  John  A.  Andrew  before  his  death  announced 
with  his  ringing  voice  his  desire  that  every  person  in  the 
Republic  should  come  back  again  and  enjoy  the  privileges 


100  ADDEESS  BY  MR.  HARRIS  ON  THE 

and  the  franchises  of  the  Kepublic;  and  HENRY  WILSON 
before  his  death  had  shown  to  all  the  people  that  his  voice 
was  for  reconciliation,  for  peace,  for  amnesty. 

Mr.  Speaker,  now  as  Massachusetts  gathers  to  her  bosom 
the  remains  of  her  chosen  son,  what  is  the  message,  what 
is  the  voice  that  she  utters  in  the  ears  of  the  nation  ?  It 
is  not  the  voice  of  hate,  it  is  not  the  voice  of  hostility,  it  is 
not  that:  it  is  the  voice  of  love,  fraternal  feeling,  and  con 
cord.  May  she  not  say,  "These  were  the  men  who  spoke 
my  voice ;  you  have  heard  it,  and  after  all  was  it  not  a 
voice  in  favor  of  'peace  on  earth  and  good- will  to  men?"1 


LIFE   AND   CHARACTER   OF  HENRY  WILSON.  101 


Address  by  Mr.   Kelley,  of  Pennsylvania. 


Mr.  Speaker,  with  whatever  warmth  of  maternal  affec 
tion  Abigail  Colbath  welcomed  the  boy  who  was  born 
to  her  in  Farmington,  N.  H.,  on  the  16th  of  February, 
1812,  there  was  naturally  a  feeling  throughout  the 
family  that  he  was  not  a  welcome  guest.  The  event 
doubtless  evoked  the  sympathy  of  friends  and  neighbors, 
for  they  knew  that  the  chilling  shadow  of  poverty  dark 
ened  the  household;  that  want  was  to  sit  by  the  cradle  of 
the  little  one,  and  that  it  was  probable  he  would  at  times 
ask  for  bread  when  the  mother  would  have  none  to  give. 
Could,  however,  Abigail  and  Winthrop  Colbath  have  pen 
etrated  the  secrets  of  the  future,  they  would  have  been 
exalted  with  joy  and  a  novel  consciousness  of  pride. 
They  would  have  seen  that,  though  poverty  was  to  attend 
his  infancy  and  poorly-requited  labor  be  his  lot  in  youth 
and  early  manhood,  their  child  was  destined  to  be  a  posi 
tive  and  beneficent  force  during  one  of  the  great  epochs 
in  his  country's  history,  and  that,  after  a  life  closed  in  the 
"sere  and  yellow  leaf,"  his  remains  would  be  borne  from 
the  Capitol  of  his  country  by  a  grateful  and  sorrowing 
people  to  the  State  he  had  so  long  served  and  which  in 


102  ADDRESS  BY  MR.   KELLEY   ON   THE 

recognition  of  his  services  had  honored  him  as  it  had  few 
of  its  citizens. 

I  have  heard  men  say  that  HENRY  WILSON  was  not  a 
great  man.  This  may  be  true;  but,  if  it  be,  it  proves  that 
a  good  spirit  is  a  more  potent  social  agent  than  great 
parts.  HENRY  WILSON,  by  his  fidelity  to  conviction,  by 
his  freedom  from  selfish  ambitions,  by  his  powers  as  an 
organizer,  his  capacity  to  combine  for  common  objects 
those  who,  differing  widely  on  incidental  points,  agreed 
only  on  the  leading  purpose  of  the  day,  and  by  his  almost 
ceaseless  and  seemingly  unwearying  labor,  exercised  dur 
ing  the  last  quarter  of  a  century  an  influence  as  powerful 
and  wide-spread  as  any  among  the  most  gifted  of  his  fel 
low-citizens. 

I  remember  his  advent  to  the  politics  of  Massachusetts 
as  the  Natick  cobbler,  in  1840,  shortly  before  which  date 
I  had  ceased  to  be  a  working  jeweler  in  Boston,  whither 
I  had  gone  in  the  winter  of  1834— '35,  in  pursuit  of  em 
ployment,  which  the  severity  of  a  financial  crisis  denied 
me  in  my  native  city.  The  earnestness  of  the  man,  the 
simplicity  and  directness  of  his  character,  his  knowledge 
of  facts,  his  clearness  of  statement,  and  the  language  in 
which  he  clothed  thought  and  fact  gave  promise  of  a  po 
tential  future,  and  his  position  in  the  politics  of  Massachu 
setts  was  at  once  assured.  Mr.  WILSON  and  I  were  then 
members  of  opposing  parties;  he  was  a  whig,  I  a  demo 
crat.  Having  returned  to  my  home  and  engaged  in  other 
pursuits  than  those  for  which  the  labors  of  my  youth  had 


LIFE  AND   CHARACTER  OF  HENRY  WILSON.  103 

fitted  me,  I  had  not  observed  his  progress  in  connection 
with  public  affairs,  and  he  next  came  specially  under  my 
notice  in  1852,  when  he  had  been  a  delegate  to  the  national 
convention  of  the  free-soil  party,  held  at  Pittsburgh  in 
1852,  and  been  called  to  preside  over  that  body,  and  also 
made  chairman  of  the  national  committee  of  that  party. 
From  Pittsburgh  he  came  to  Philadelphia.  I  met  him 
soon  after  his  arrival,  and  the  interest  we  each  felt  in  pre 
venting  the  extension  to  the  Territories  of  a  system  of  un 
paid  labor  and  to  the  creation  of  more  slave  States  had 
removed  the  political  differences  that  had  divided  us  twelve 
years  before.  From  that  time  we  were  to  be  co-workers 
and  friends,  and  our  meetings  were  frequent,  for  thence 
forward  it  seemed  impossible  to  conduct  a  campaign  in 
Pennsylvania  without  the  aid  of  HENKY  WILSON'S  prudent 
counsels  and  popular  appeals.  As  a  public  speaker  he 
was  welcomed  to  every  part  of  our  State,  and  I  do  not 
exaggerate  when  I  say  that  he  addressed  more  people  in 
Pennsylvania  than  any  other  man  who  never  resided 
within  her  limits.  In  parts  of  the  State  he  was  loved  as 
he  was  by  the  reformatory  and  progressive  people  of  Mas 
sachusetts.  His  name  never  failed  to  attract  a  large  au 
dience  or  his  addresses  to  inspire  with  courage  and  the 
purpose  of  determined  and  effective  labor  those  who  heard 
him. 

We  shall  hear  his  voice  no  more  on  our  mountain  sides 
and  in  our  beautiful  valleys,  but  he  has  not  ceased  to  be 
an  influence  for  good  among  us.  The  good  men  do  lives 


104  ADDRESS  BY  MR.  KELLEY  ON  THE 

after  them.  The  story  of  HENRY  WILSON'S  youth,  if  fitly 
written,  will  be  clothed  in  pure  monosyllabic  Saxon,  that 
untaught  children  may  understand  its  full  import,  Nor 
do  the  incidents  of  his  maturer  life  need  rhetorical  setting. 
They  speak  for  themselves  with  such  force  and  directness 
that  his  biographer  who  shall  attempt  by  literary  effort  to 
add  to  their  force  will  mar  the  influence  of  his  example. 
To  produce  its  just  effect  the  statement  of  the  means  by 
which  he  rose,  step  by  step,  from  the  shoemaker's  seat  to 
the  Legislature  of  Massachusetts,  to  the  position  of  next 
to  the  senior  member  of  the  Senate  of  the  United  States, 
and  subsequently  to  the  Vice-Presidency,  should  be  made 
in  his  own  simple  and  direct  style.  His  example  of  frugality 
and  abstinence  from  the  use  of  all  hurtful  stimulants,  his  habit 
of  personal  economy,  his  indifference  to  worldly  wealth,  his 
sympathetic  generosity  to  the  poor  and  afflicted,  his  unceas 
ing  labors,  and  the  honors  that  attended  them,  are  inspiring 
examples  to  every  gifted  child  of  poverty.  Invaluable  as 
the  story  of  HENRY  WILSON'S  life  is  to  us  of  the  North, 
now  that  the  terrible  apprehension  of  servile  revolt  and  of 
arbitrarily  enforced  social  equality  between  the  races, 
which  filled  many  minds  after  war  had  emancipated  the 
slaves,  that  hung  like  threatening  clouds  over  Southern 
society,  has  vanished,  it  is  far  more  valuable  to  the 
South,  among  whose  people  are  so  many  who  will  be 
benefited  by  learning  how  a  poor  and  almost  friendless 
boy  can  find  pleasure  in  books,  and  by  their  friendly  as 
sistance  mount  from  helpless  obscurity  to  personal  power 


LIFE  AND  CHARACTER  OF  HENRY  WILSON.  105 

and  possible  distinction.  But  not  to  the  humble  alone 
does  the  life  of  HENRY  WILSON  speak,  for,  properly  con 
sidered,  its  great  lesson  is  to  those  whose  lot  in  life  is 
happier,  whose  privilege  it  is  to  legislate  for  and  govern 
others.  In  his  career  they  will  find  proof  that  energies, 
which  neglected  or  trained  in  vicious  ways  would  be 
dangerous  to  society,  if  turned  toward  self-culture  and 
directed  to  noble  purposes,  will  add  not  only  to  the  power 
but  to  the  glory  of  the  state. 


14  w 


106  ADDRESS  BY  ME.  KNOTT  ON  THE 


Address  by  Mr.  Knott,  of  Kentucky. 


Mr.  Speaker,  it  is  no  part  of  my  purpose  to  pronounce 
a  studied  panegyric  upon  either  the  genius  or  the  public 
services  of  the  distinguished  man  to  the  memory  of  whose 
virtues  we  would  pay  a  becoming  tribute  of  respect,  and 
the  recollection  of  whose  frailties,  if  any  he  had,  we  would 
bury  with  his  moldering  dust  forever  beyond  our  view. 
I  seek,  sir,  to  add  but  a  single  leaf  to  the  garland  we 
would  hang  upon  his  tomb.  I  rise  simply  to  express  the 
unfeigned  and  heartfelt  admiration  of  my  people  as  well 
as  my  own  high  appreciation  of  that  genuine  manliness 
and  true  nobility  of  soul  exhibited  by  the  illustrious  de 
ceased  in  one  of  the  most  unostentatious  yet  to  my  mind 
one  of  the  most  singularly  beautiful  and  touching  acts  of 
his  whole  life. 

But  a  short  time  previous  to  his  death  Mr.  WILSON  had 
occasion  to  visit  the  metropolis  of  my  native  State,  where 
he  was  welcomed  with  that  cordial,  open-handed,  warm 
hearted  hospitality  which  I  am  proud  to  say  has  always 
characterized  its  generous  people.  All  classes,  irrespective 
of  political  prejudices  and  party  affiliations,  vied  with  each 
other  in  extending  to  him  the  evidences  of  that  high  con- 


LIFE  AND  CHARACTER  OF  HENRY  WILSON.  107 

si  deration  due  to  one  of  the  most  distinguished  citizens 
of  the  country,  and  especially  to  the  high  position  he  oc 
cupied  as  Vice-President  of  the  United  States.  No  atten 
tion  which  could  possibly  render  his  stay  agreeable  was 
omitted  by  those  into  whose  midst  he  had  come.  And  no 
one  was  better  able  to  appreciate  their  courtesy  than  their 
illustrious  visitor.  But  while  he  was  in  the  full  enjoyment 
of  those  amenities  which  were  so  genial  to  his  own  warm 
and  generous  nature,  cheered  on  every  hand  by  friendly 
greetings,  welcomed,  honored,  and  entertained  in  circles 
of  the  highest  refinement  and  culture,  where  all  was  joy 
and  happiness  and  peace,  a  far  different  scene  was  pre 
sented  in  an  unpretending  Kentucky  home  a  little  over  a 
hundred  miles  away.  There,  around  the  hearth-stone  of 
one  whom  he  had  known  in  former  years  as  an  able  and 
determined  political  opponent,  one  from  whom  he  had 
been  long  separated  by  the  fierce  conflict  of  party  strife 
and  the  still  fiercer  clash  of  war,  were  gathered  the  wan 
specter  of  anxiety  and  anguish  and  sorrow;  for  there  the 
proud  form  which  had  challenged  the  admiration  of  thou 
sands  in  the  forum,  upon  the  rostrum,  in  the  Senate,  and 
amid  the  crash  of  battle,  stricken  and  prostrate  by  disease, 
was  wasting  rapidly  away.  There  one  of  the  grandest 
spirits  that  ever  illustrated  the  dignity  and  majesty  of  our 
race  was  pluming  its  pinions  for  its  final  flight  to  brighter 
climes.  Breckinridge  the  proscribed — the  exile  in  his  own 
native  land — the  alien  in  the  midst  of  his  own  people,  who 
loved  him  as  a  brother,  lay  dying.  When  the  sad  intelli- 


108  ADDRESS  BY  MR.  KNOTT  ON  THE 

gence  was  communicated  to  the  great  man  whose  memory 
we  mourn  to-day,  he  threw  aside  all  the  fascinations  of 
the  most  refined  and  elegant  hospitality,  and  with  his  great 
heart  full  of  friendship  and  fraternal  feeling  hastened  to 
the  bedside  of  the  dying  statesman,  who  in  the  calm  dig 
nity  of  his  own  majestic  soul  had  borne  for  years  the  ban 
of  proscription,  there  to  tender  his  sympathy  and  testify 
his  warm  personal  regard  for  one  whom  he  had  formerly 
recognized  as  the  exponent  and  champion  of  principles 
which  he  himself  had  made  it  the  great  mission  of  his  life 
to  oppose  in  every  legitimate  manner  and  with  all  the 
earnestness  and  fervor  of  his  own  zealous  and  determined 
nature.  Ah,  Mr.  Speaker,  what  a  scene  was  that!  The 
Vice-President  of  a  proud  and  powerful  people,  with  every 
feature  of  his  benevolent  face  beaming  with  the  kindest 
sentiments  of  friendship  and  brotherly  love,  as  he  held  the 
emaciated  hand  of  the  dying  hero  in  his  own  warm  and 
cordial  grasp !  What  an  example  to  the  emulation  of  the 
genuine  American  everywhere;  what  a  total  absence  of 
every  trace  of  that  bitter,  unforgiving,  relentless,  remorse 
less  hate  that  clings  alone  to  the  ignoble  soul !  What  a 
sublime  spectacle  of  that  exalted  magnanimity  which 
always  belongs  to  a  noble  nature  ! 

Mr.  Speaker,  that  simple  act  of  manly  courtesy  secured 
for  our  dead  Vice-President  a  warm  place  in  the  heart  of 
every  true  Kentuckian.  From  that  hour  there  was  a  total 
oblivion  of  everything  like  prejudice  that  they  may  have 
entertained  against  him.  From  that  hour  there  was  not  a 


LIFE  AND  CHARACTER  OF  HENRY  WILSON,  109 

household  in  my  native  State  in  which  HENRY  WILSON 
would  not  have  been  hailed  as  a  welcome  and  an  honored 
guest.  For,  sir,  that  simple,  touching,  unostentatious  inci 
dent  proved  him  to  be  a  generous,  warm-hearted,  high- 
souled,  noble  man,  and  an  honor  to  the  proud  old  common 
wealth  that  gave  him  birth.  And,  sir,  when  the  lightning- 
winged  messenger  whispered  over  this  land  the  melancholy 
tidings  of  his  peculiar,  mournful  death,  it  nowhere  touched 
a  more  responsive  chord,  nor  will  its  memory  be  any 
where  more  tenderly  enshrined,  than  in  the  grateful  hearts 
of  Kentucky. 


110  ADDKESS  ]3Y  MR.    CLYMER   ON   THE 


Address  by    Mr.    Clymer,  of  Pennsylvania. 


.  Mr.  Speaker,  during  my  brief  service  in  this  body  the 
commonwealth  of  Massachusetts  has  been  chief  mourner 
among  the  States.  Her  great  Senator,  Charles  Sumner, 
was  first  summoned  to  his  account,  and  then  in  quick 
succession  Alvah  Crocker,  Samuel  Hooper,  and  James 
Buffinton,  members  of  this  House  during  the  last  Congress, 
each  honored  and  distinguished  and  all  beloved  by  those 
who  knew  them,  entered  the  dread  portal!  Now  again 
she  is  sorely  stricken.  One  who  had  long  and  faithfully 
served  her  in  her  own  councils  and  in  those  of  the  nation, 
one  whom  she  had  given  to  the  Republic  to  occupy  the 
position  next  highest  in  dignity  and  power,  has  passed 
away,  and  her  sister  commonwealths  may  not  fail  to  assure 
her  of  their  common  sympathy  in  this  hour  of  her  new 
and  sad  bereavement. 

It  is  my  regret  that  the  voice  of  Pennsylvania  is  not 
heard  through  one  who  knew  him  more  intimately  than 
myself,  and  if  I  fail  to  justly  record  his  personal  virtues  or 
to  place  a  proper  estimate  on  his  public  services,  I  pray  it 


LIFE  AND  CHARACTER   OP  HENRY  WILSON.  Ill 

may  be  attributed  to  the  absence  of  those  intimate  per 
sonal  relations  which  alone  enable  us  to  thoroughly  appre 
ciate  and  understand  the  motives  and  actions  of  men. 

Born  in  obscurity  and  reared  in  poverty,  he  early  exhib 
ited  that  indomitable  and  unceasing  energy  which  so 
strongly  marked  his  subsequent  career.  Amid  the  drud 
gery  of  his  life,  when  bound  apprentice  to  a  farmer  and 
when  learning  the  trade  of  a  shoemaker,  he  was  assiduous 
in  his  efforts  to  acquire  knowledge,  and  of  him  it  may  be 
truly  said  that  he  was  "  a  self-made  man,"  for  all  his  early 
scholastic  training  was  acquired  by  his  own  unaided  exer 
tions,  under  the  most  difficult  and  often  the  most  disheart 
ening  circumstances. 

His  thirst  for  knowledge  was  intense,  and  his  mind  was 
too  vigorous  and  acute  to  be  blind  to  the  fact  that  mere 
untutored  and  uncultured  genius  is  of  little  avail  when 
brought  into  contact  with  trained  and  disciplined  intel 
lect.  The  friendless  condition  of  his  boyhood,  the  grave 
and  pressing  necessities  of  his  early  manhood,  his  constant 
struggle  with  poverty,  his  unyielding  determination  to 
rise  above  the  condition  in  which  he  was  born,  all  tended 
to  develop  in  him  a  sturdy  independence  of  thought  and 
action  which  was  clearly  exhibited  at  the  very  threshold  of 
his  public  life.  Sprung  from  the  soil,  knowing  well  its 
hard  condition,  allied  by  his  antecedents  with  the  sons  of 
toil,  never  failing  to  recognize  their  rights,  and  ever  ready 
to  defend  their  wrongs,  he  did  not  hesitate  in  their  inter 
ests  to  break  political  alliances,  then  all-alluring  and  most 


112  ADDRESS  BY  ME.   CLYMER  ON  THE 

powerful,  to  assert  the  individuality  of  his  convictions 
and  the  sincerity  of  his  motives.  Added  to  this  inde 
pendence  of  thought  and  action,  he  had  that  which  is  so 
necessary  to  great  achievements,  implicit  faith  in  himself 
and  in  the  soundness  of  his  own  judgment,  giving  direct 
ness,  force,  and  simplicity  to  his  character. 

In  him  there  was,  too,  a  large-hearted  charity,  a  deep 
human  sympathy  born  of  his  early  adversity,  which  im 
pelled  him  during  his  whole  life  to  befriend  the  poor  and 
lowly,  to  lift  up  and  succor  the  weak,  to  cheer  and 
encourage  the  struggling,  and  to  defend  and  protect  the 
friendless  and  oppressed.  And,  sir,  as  I  look  back  upon 
the  clouds  and  darkness  from  which  we  have  emerged,  and 
consider  what  sacrifices  he  made,  what  obloquy  he  endured, 
what  labor  he  performed  in  order  that  this  charity,  this 
human  sympathy,  might  find  expression,  I  may  not  fail  to 
avow  my  profound  admiration  for  his  sincerity,  retaining, 
nevertheless,  my  own  convictions  as  to  the  justice  and 
propriety  of  the  means  by  which  he  sought  to  accomplish 
results. 

It  was  this  same  catholic  spirit  which  caused  him,  when 
the  civil  war  was  ended,  to  devote  all  his  energies  to 
healing  its  wounds,  to  drying  up  its  tears,  and  to  rebuilding 
its  places  made  waste  and  desolate.  In  him  there  was  no 
bitterness;  his  heart  concealed  no  vengeance;  "  Vengeance 
is  mine ;  I  will  repay,  saith  the  Lord,"  was  his  childlike, 
Christian  faith,  and  in  the  last  public  act  of  his  long  career 
he  placed  it  on  record  for  all  coming  time ;  since  it  was 


LIFE  AND   CHARACTER   OF  HENRY  WILSON.  113 

at  his  suggestion  and  by  his  desire  and  advice  that  the 
State  convention  of  his  party  in  Massachusetts,  held  at 
Worcester  on  the  29th  day  of  September,  1875,  over 
which  he  presided,  adopted  the  following  resolution : 

That  the  republicans  of  Massachusetts  welcome  all  auguries  and 
evidences  that  the  Centennial  of  American  Independence  will  be 
celebrated  by  the  complete  restoration  of  fraternity,  and  they  ex 
press  the  opinion  that  the  time  has  come  for  the  removal  of  all 
remaining  political  disabilities. 

Had  he  lived  to-day  we  may  believe  that  the  spirit  of 
this  resolution  would  have  received  unanimous  indorse 
ment  here  as  it  did  during  the  last  Congress.  That  it  has 
not  is  not  the  fault  of  him,  being  dead,  nor  of  the  people  of 
the  great  commonwealth  who  so  loved  and  honored  him. 

To  others  I  cheerfully  leave  the  task  of  recounting 
with  particularity  his  labors  in  the  Senate  during  his  long 
and  eventful  service.  It  is  enough  for  me  to  say  that, 
being  of  robust  mental  and  physical  nature,  he  was  capa 
ble  of  great  labor ;  that  he  was  a  worker  in  its  true  and 
best  sense,  and  that  during  the  war  his  name  is  connected 
either  as  author  or  advocate  with  nearly  or  quite  all  the 
military  legislation  of  the  period.  His  presence  and  offi 
cial  service  were  given  to  every  public  duty  unselfishly 
and  freely. 

As  a  humanitarian  he  was  abreast  of,  if  not  in  advance 
of,  public  sentiment  on  every  moral  question,  and  he  never 
shrank  from  the  public  advocacy  of  his  views,  whatever 
might  be  the  effect  on  his  political  fortunes. 

In  contemplating  his  public  life,  the  impulse  is  irresist- 


J5  w 


114  ADDRESS  BY  MR.  CLYMER  ON  THE 

ible  to  contrast  it  with  that  of  Charles  Simmer,  his  col 
league  during  the  eighteen  years  of  his  senatorial  career. 
To  him  he  was  most  unlike,  and  yet  he  was  no  less  use 
ful.  The  one  the  patrician,  educated  in  the  groves  of  the 
academy ;  the  other  the  plebeian,  who,  groping  amid  toil 
and  penury,  sought  knowledge  and  found  it  by  his  own 
unaided  efforts.  Sunmer  was  a  man  of  books ;  WILSON, 
of  men ;  Sumner,  of  ideas ;  WILSON,  of  deeds ;  Sumner, 
of  theories ;  WILSON,  of  action ;  Sumner  lived  and  moved 
in  the  unreal  world  of  thought ;  WILSON  moved  and  acted 
among  men.  Each  had  strong  convictions.  Sumner 
sought  and  would  have  his  in  paths  chosen  by  himself ; 
WILSON  would  accept  results  offered  him  by  fortune  or 
won  in  modes  he  did  not  prefer.  As  statesmen,  Surnner 
acted  in  profound  indifference,  if  not  contempt,  of  the  act 
ual  forces  which  existed,  looking  confidently  to  the  end 
some  time  to  come ;  WILSON  labored  in  the  light  of  and 
molded  the  influences  which  surrounded  him,  subordinat 
ing  all  minor  matters  to  the  object  he  desired  to  accom 
plish.  As  a  result,  Sumner  theorized  much,  and  left  as 
memorials  many  splendid  phrases ;  WILSON  spoke  much 
and  identified  himself  with  all  the  distinguished  measures 
of  his  speech.  Widely  different  in  origin,  tastes,  thought, 
and  action,  these  two  men  supplemented  and  comple 
mented  each  other  in  a  way  so  rare  and  yet  so  admirable 
that  the  great  commonwealth  which  ever  honored  herself 
by  honoring  them  may  fail  to  find  in  long  years  to  come 
two  men  who  shall  so  truly  reflect  all  of  her  that  is  good 


LIFE   AND   CHARACTER   OF   HENRY  WILSON.  115 

and  true,  manly  and  generous,  learned  and  refined.  No 
shadow  fell  upon  their  friendship  in  life,  and  they  will  go 
into  history  so  linked  together  by  the  unity  of  their  serv 
ice  and  so  bound  together  by  the  very  dissimilarity  of 
their  training  and  action  that  the  one  may  never  be  men 
tioned  without  recalling  the  honored  name  of  the  other. 

In  seeking  for  the  cause  which  so  strongly  bound  these 
two  men  together  in  spite  of  the  obvious  dissimilarity 
which  existed,  it  may  be  found  in  that  absolute  and  per 
fect  personal  integrity  which  so  clearly  marked  the  con 
duct  of  each.  And  if  the  late  Vice-President  had  no  other 
claim  to  the  respect  and  admiration  of  the  age  in  which 
he  lived,  it  would  shed  a  halo  of  glory  around  his  name 
in  all  time  to  come  to  have  it  said  of  him  with  truth  that, 
having  served  State  and  nation  for  more  than  a  quarter  of 
a  century,  he  died  poor.  The  statement  of  the  fact  is  its 
own  commentary.  Amid  the  license  of  civil  war ;  with 
public  conscience  blunted ;  when  cupidity  was  excited  by 
opportunity ;  when  unmeasured  wealth  might  have  been 
and  often  was  wrung  from  the  very  necessities  of  a  stricken 
land  without  challenge  and  without  reproof,  he,  leading  a 
life  of  almost  Spartan  simplicity,  stainless  and  pure,  died, 
as  he  had  lived,  an  honest  man. 

There  was,  sir,  something  very  touching  and  sad  in  the 
mariner  of  his  death.  It  did  not  come  to  him  unheralded. 
Long  before  the  final  stroke  the  warning  messenger  was 
by  his  side,  and  for  months  it  followed  him  silently  as  a 
shadow,  relentlessly  as  fate !  Ever  afterward  he  went 


11G  ADDRESS  BY  MB.  CLYMER  ON  THE 

about  the  land  deeply  solicitous  for  the  common  welfare, 
bearing  messages  of  fraternal  love,  of  peace,  of  good-will 
to  all  of  every  section.  Walking  daily  in  the  very  pres 
ence  of  death,  envy,  hatred,  malice,  and  all  uncharitable- 
ness  found  no  home  in  his  breast ;  and  as  he  ever  prayed 
for  mercy  and  forgiveness,  so,  too,  would  he  have  extended 
these  rich  blessings  to  every  one  everywhere. 

Weeks  before  the  meeting  of  Congress  in  December,  he 
came  here  in  restless  anxiety  to  complete  the  work  which 
is  to  be  the  record  of  his  life  and  times.  And  here,  in  his 
chamber  of  state,  in  high  serenity,  sustained  by  his  faith 
and  willing  to  be  judged  by  his  motives  and  works,  he 
received  the  final  summons,  and,  gathering  his  robes  about 
him,  he  fell  asleep  under  the  shadow  of  the  Dome  of  the 
Capitol.  It  was  a  fitting  place  for  him  to  die.  Wifeless, 
childless — the  light  had  gone  out  from  his  own  house ;  all 
was  dreary  darkness  there — and  coming  to  this  the  home 
of  the  nation  he  entered  it  as  of  right  by  virtue  of  his  great 
office,  and  from  its  portal  passed  away  forever,  to  find  his 
last  home  in  the  bosom  of  the  State  he  had  loved  and 
served  so  well,  deplored  and  respected  by  the  people. 

Full  of  years  and  laden  with  honors,  the  most  extrava 
gant  political  dreams  of  his  youth  and  manhood  more  than 
verified;  with  but  one  possible  ambition  unsatisfied— who 
may  say  he  was  not  fortunate  in  his  death? 


LIFE  AND  CHARACTER  OF  HENRY  WILSON.  117 


Address  by    Mr.  Kasson,  of  Iowa. 


Mr.  Speaker,  the  representative  men  of  a  great  histori 
cal  era  are  passing  rapidly  from  this  sphere  of  their  duties. 
One  by  one,  while  the  country  proudly  recognizes  in  them 
the  souvenirs  of  its  latest  glory,  they  sink  beneath  that 
tide  which  overflows  all  mortal  distinction.  Lincoln,  Win 
ter  Davis,  and  Chase,  Fessenden,  Grimes,  and  Sumner, 
leaders  in  the  forefront  of  the  late  gigantic  battle  between 
hostile  ideas,  had  already  passed  from  among  us  before 
reaching  the  usual  limit  of  human  life.  Again  unwilling 
to  wait  for  the  ripeness  of  age,  death  has  summoned  an 
other  of  the  historic  company  to  join  his  old  associates 
in  the  land  beyond  the  sun.  Heaven  seems  to  have  grown 
avaricious,  to  seize  so  soon,  and  in  the  very  vigor  of  his 
years,  another  living  star  from  the  visible  coronet  of  the 
Republic.  We  complain  that  the  divine  sickle  could  not 
wait  for  all  this  human  harvest  until  the  whitened  and 
bending  heads  should  incline  with  the  weight  of  years 
toward  the  earth  which  was  destined  to  receive  them. 

When  HENRY  WILSON,  Vice-President  of  the  United 
States,  received  his  summons,  his  form  was  still  round  and 
erect,  his  eyes  beaming  with  sympathetic  intelligence,  his 
hearing  open  to  every  sound,  his  complexion  fresh;  his 


118  ADDRESS  BY  ME.  KASSON  ON  THE 

voice  retained  its  earnest  tones,  his  mind  its  vigor,  and  his 
heart  its  patriotism.  The  ears  of  his  countrymen  in  all 
parts  of  the  Union  were  still  listening  to  his  counsel,  while 
their  understandings  were  informed  by  his  practical  wis 
dom.  We  justly  pronounce  his  departure  from  public  life 
a  national  loss.  It  is  the  occasion  of  grief  to  kindred,  to 
neighbors,  to  friends,  to  associates,  and  to  patriots.  Kin 
dred  and  neighbors  about  his  humble  home  on  that  eastern 
coast  of  Massachusetts  to  which  his  dust  was  committed, 
remember  and  celebrate  his  kindly  private  virtues  and  af 
fections.  There  remains  to  us  who  have  been  his  comrades 
in  stormy  times  the  recollection  and  celebration  of  those 
loftier  public  qualities,  which  bore  him  from  such  lowly 
beginnings  to  his  exalted  office,  and  which  won  for  him 
the  large  influence  which  he  wielded  at  the  time  of  his 
death. 

Sir,  the  two  extreme  forms  of  human  government,  des 
potism  and  democracy,  touch  each  other  at  various  points 
in  spirit  and  in  action.  Both  are  willful,  full  of  force,  and 
delight  in  surprises,  alternating  in  action  between  selfish 
ness  and  generosity.  Despotism  sometimes  surrounds 
itself  with  the  splendors  of  high  birth  and  the  culture  of 
learning  and  the  refinements  of  the  arts  and  civilization ; 
and  again,  indulges  itself  with  the  overthrow  of  all  in 
herited  rights  and  all  claims  of  distinction,  and  elevates, 
instead,  some  unheralded  and  unknown  servants,  some 
Daniel  or  Joseph,  from  the  humblest  ranks  to  the  govern 
ing  places  of  the  state. 


LIFE   AND   CHARACTER   OF   HENRY  WILSON.  119 

So  the  limited  democracy  of  America  lias  indulged  its 
will  at  one  time  in  elevating  the  well-bred  dignity  and 
worth  of  Washington  and  of  Adams,  the  polished  culture 
of  Jefferson,  and  the  well-trained  logic  of  Madison.  Again, 
it  has  taken  the  ruder  strength  of  Jackson,  and  the  sol 
dierly  simplicity  of  Taylor.  Later  still,  with  an  awakened 
conscience,  it  chose  a  great-hearted,  undisciplined  child  of 
the  people,  and  sent  Lincoln  suddenly  to  the  ruling  place. 
Democracy  in  him  manifested  a  grandeur  of  character 
which  was  much  sooner  comprehended  by  the  earnest 
hearts  of  the  common  people,  at  home  and  abroad,  than 
by  the  more  cultivated  intellects  of  the  world,  who  have 
since  hastened  to  crown  his  unclassic  brow  with  the  laurel 
of  history.  It  was  in  this  era,  when  our  republican  de 
mocracy  was  listening  to  its  new-found  conscience,  that  it 
nurture^,  watched,  and  developed  another  of  its  unheralded 
children,  amid  the  trials  of  poverty  and  the  struggles  for 
even  an  incomplete  education. 

I  trust,  Mr.  Speaker,  that  it  is  not  too  early  to  claim  for 
the  late  Vice-President  the  impartial  and  unimpassioned 
judgment  of  the  citizens  of  all  parts  of  the  restored  Union. 
In  the  decade  which  has  elapsed  since  the  fires  of  civil 
war  were  extinguished,  the  inflamed  minds  of  men  have 
also  become  more  cool  and  dispassionate.  Certainly  a 
thoroughly  restored  balance  of  judgment  cannot  be  re 
gained  suddenly,  on  the  morrow  of  such  a  conflict.  When 
we  remember  how  many  years  the  passions  were  growing, 
how  at  last  they  ripened  into  blood,  how  many  sacrifices 


120  ADDRESS  BY  MR.  KASSON  ON   THE 

were  endured  on  both  sides  before  the  fever  departed  and 
the  wounded  nation  rose  to  its  feet  once  more,  we  find 
cause  for  congratulation  that  the  balance  is  so  far  redressed 
as  we  find  it  to-day.  For  thirty  years  it  was  a  contest  of 
opposing  ideas  respecting  the  proper  constitutional  organi 
zation  of  American  society.  These  ideas  were  the  invisi 
ble  combatants,  which  finally  incarnated  themselves  for 
fight  and  waged  their  warfare  till  the  earth  trembled  under 
their  clashing.  In  the  intellectual  struggle  Mr.  WILSON 
early  engaged,  and  on  the  side  of  that  small  minority  which 
seemed  at  the  time  to  be  a  mere  faction,  hopeless  of  the 
confidence  of  even  a  single  State.  When  that  faction  grew 
into  a  party,  and  the  party  increased  to  a  majority,  and  the 
majority  obtained  control  of  the  State,  then,  in  1855,  the 
liberty-loving  artisan  replaced  in  the  United  States  Senate 
that  polished  scholar  and  orator  whom  Massachusetts  found 
unequal  to  the  demand  of  the  coming  crisis.  In  that  body, 
and  in  its  high  debates,  he  was  to  be  compared  or  contrasted, 
by  friend  and  foe,  with  such  distinguished  associates  as  Cass 
and  Seward,  Chase  and  Douglas,  Sumner  and  Mason,  Crit- 
tenden  and  Slidell,  with  whom  he  was  to  discuss  the  most 
vital  questions  of  the  Union. 

When  Mr.  WILSON  left  the  plow  for  the  bench  of  the 
artisan,  and  abandoned  that  bench  for  the  forum  of  public 
debate,  he  had  small  store  of  learning,  but  a  great  sym 
pathy  for  all  his  brethren — the  children  of  labor.  The 
field  of  his  knowledge  did  not  include  the  courses  of  the 
planets,  the  discoveries  of  science,  the  rules  of  art,  nor 


LIFE  AND   CHARACTER  OF   HENRY  WILSON.  121 

the  philosophy  of  antiquity,  nor  even  the  history  of  older 
nations.  But  his  mind,  with  remarkable  vigor,  grasped 
and  comprehended  the  wants  of  his  race  on  this  continent. 
His  knowledge  of  American  needs  was  at  first  more  the 
result  of  a  sympathetic  experience  than  of  careful  study. 
He  never  separated  himself,  nor  sought  to  separate  him 
self,  from  the  ground  of  his  early  experiences.  That 
ground  was  hard  fact.  Throughout  his  career  he  dealt 
with  facts.  The  genius  of  his  childhood  endowed  him 
with  no  gifts  of  imagination  or  of  artistic  invention,  and 
the  wings  of  culture  were  wanting  to  his  fancy.  He 
could  neither  soar  to  the  zenith,  nor  descend  to  the  nadir; 
but  always  moved  along  the  line  of  the  visible  horizon. 
There  was  no  fever  in  his  speech.  Its  most  vigorous  pul 
sations  manifested  only  the  glow  of  great  earnestness. 
Without  soaring,  the  movement  of  his  eloquence  was  a 
strong  stride,  every  footfall  of  which  struck  the  solid 
ground  and  gave  vigor  to  the  next  step.  His  whole  politi 
cal  landscape  was  marked  by  solid  metes  and  bounds. 
In  the  realm  of  American  facts  he  was  king,  and  in  this 
realm  he  was  rarely,  if  ever,  worsted  in  debate.  Un 
trained  in  the  law,  he  was  not  much  given  to  theories  of 
constitutional  construction,  but  was  thoroughly  imbued 
with  the  spirit  of  that  charter  of  American  liberty. 
Wherever  there  might  seem  to  be  a  conflict  of  its  provis 
ions,  its  grand  guarantees  of  the  rights  of  persons  were 
vastly  more  important,  in  his  judgment,  than  its  guaran 
tees  of  the  rights  of  property.  He  interpreted  it  always 


1C 


122  ADDRESS  BY  MB.   KASSON  ON   THE 

as  illuminated  by  the  diviner  light  of  the  Declaration  of 
Independence. 

If  ever  his  rhetoric  touched  the  borders  of  enthusiasm, 
if  ever  he  seemed  to  have  drank  at  some  spring  of  orator 
ical  inspiration,  it  was  when  he  asserted  the  right  of  labor 
to  freedom,  and  the  right  of  freemen  to  labor  without 
degradation.  Then,  filled  with  reminiscences  of  his  own 
early  struggles,  and  expanding  them  to  take  in  the  trials 
of  millions  like  himself,  and  remembering  those  aspira 
tions  which  gilded  the  dark  clouds  of  his  laborious  youth, 
he  kindled  a  flame  in  the  hearts  of  his  toiling  countrymen 
which  was  not  destined  to  die.  It  was  the  harp  of  uni 
versal  humanity  whose  cords  he  struck ;  and  such  music 
once  heard  is  never  forgotten.  It  sounds  and  resounds 
from  one  home  and  hamlet  of  the  toiling  millions  to  an 
other,  and  its  echoes  will  never  cease  till  the  divine  edict 
for  the  earning  of  bread  shall  be  revoked. 

Hear  him  for  a  moment  in  the  Senate  Chamber,  in  those 
tempestuous  times  when  labor  was  clamoring  to  be  released 
from  the  degrading  thralldom  of  personal  slavery.  A  Sen 
ator  from  South  Carolina  had  just  called  the  manual  labor 
ers  of  the  North  " hirelings,"  "essentially  slaves,"  "galled 
by  their  degradation,"  and  the  "mud-sills"  of  society. 
HENKY  WILSON,  impatient  and  glowing,  takes  up  the  word 
as  if  all  the  hills  of  New  England  were  ready  to  burst  with 

resenting  speech.     He  said : 

******* 
This  language  of  scorn  and  contempt  is  addressed  to  Senators, 
who  were  not  nursed  by  a  slave ;  whose  lot  it  was  to  toil  with  their 


LIFE  AND   CHARACTER  OF  HENRY  WILSON.  123 

own  bands;  to  eat  bread  earned,  not  by  the  sweat  of  another's  brow 
but  by  their  own.  Sir,  I  am  the  son  of  a  hireling  manual  laborer, 
who,  with  the  frosts  of  seventy  winters  on  his  brow,  lives  by  daily 
labor.  I,  too,  have  been  a  hireling  manual  laborer.  Poverty  cast 
its  dark  and  chilling  shadow  over  the  home  of  my  childhood ;  and 
want  was  there,  an  unbidden  guest.  At  the  age  of  ten  years,  to 
aid  him  who  gave  me  being  in  keeping  the  gaunt  specter  from  the 
hearth  of  the  mother  who  bore  me,  I  left  the  home  of  my  boyhood 
and  went  to  earn  my  bread  by  daily  labor.  Many  a  weary  mile 
have  I  traveled — 

"To  beg  a  brother  of  the  earth 
To  give  me  leave  to  toil." 

Sir,  I  have  toiled  as  a  "hiring  laborer"  in  the  field  and  the 
workshop,  and  I  tell  the  Senator  from  South  Carolina  that  1  never 
"felt  galled  by"  my  "  degradation."  No,  sir;  never.  *  *  *  I 
was  conscious  of  my  manhood.  I  was  the  peer  of  my  employer. 
*  *  *  I  knew,  too,  that  the  world  was  before  me;  that  its 
wealth,  its  garnered  treasures  of  knowledge,  its  honors,  the  cov 
eted  prizes  of  life,  were  within  the  grasp  of  a  brave  heart  and  a 
tireless  hand  ;  and  I  accepted  the  responsibilities  of  my  position, 
all  unconscious  that  I  was  a  "slave."  *  *  *  In  every  position 
of  private  and  public  life  are  our  associates  who  were  but  yester 
day  "hireling  laborers,"  "mud-sills,"  "slaves."  In  every  depart 
ment  of  human  effort  are  noble  men  who  sprang  from  our  ranks — 
men  whose  good  deeds  will  be  felt  and  will  live  in  the  grateful 
memories  of  men  when  the  stones  reared  by  the  hands  of  affection 
to  their  honored  names  shall  crumble  into  dust.  Our  eyes  glisten 
and  our  hearts  throb  over  the  bright,  glowing,  and  radiant  pages 
of  our  history  that  record  the  deeds  of  patriotism  of  the  sons  of  New 
England  who  sprang  from  our  ranks  and  wore  the  badges  of  toil. 
While  the  names  of  Benjamin  Franklin,  Koger  Sherman,  Nathauael 
Greene,  and  Paul  Revere  live  on  the  brightest  pages  of  our  his 
tory,  the  mechanics  of  Massachusetts  and  New  England  will  never 
want  illustrious  examples  to  incite  them  to  noble  aspirations  and 
noble  deeds. 

So  spoke  this  champion  of  free  labor.     The  same  senti 
ment  expressed  by  the  rhymes  of  Robert  Burns  has  echoed 


124  ADDRESS  OF  MR.   KASSON  ON  THE 

over  two  continents,  and  still  warms  the  hearts  of  all  the 
English-speaking  races.  Sir,  had  this  splendid  assertion 
of  indignant  manhood  come  down  to  us  on  some  venera 
ble  parchment  which  preserved  the  sayings  of  Greek  or 
Roman  orators,  our  high-bred  youth  would  echo  it  in  all 
our  schools  and  universities  as  belonging  to  the  most  vig 
orous  days  of  ancient  civilization.  It  would  have  ranked 
with  the  protest  of  St.  Paul  when  he  asserted  his  rights 
as  a  Roman  citizen,  and  appealed  to  Caesar  for  their  recog 
nition,  as  WILSON  appealed  to  the  Senate  and  to  the  Re 
public.  No  prouder,  manlier  utterance  was  ever  heard  on 
the  floor  of  the  Senate  or  from  a  tribune  of  the  people.  It 
presents  the  inner  life,  better  than  any  words  of  my  inven 
tion,  of  him  whose  funeral-rites  we  celebrate. 

Of  all  the  speeches  of  this  eminent  man  of  the  people 
known  to  me,  this,  from  which  I  borrow  an  extract,  in 
reply  to  the  challenge,  imported  from  the  drawing-room 
into  the  politics  of  that  day,  and  flung  into  the  face  of  free 
labor,  is  the  most  characteristic,  as  it  was,  perhaps,  the 
most  effective.  Its  wide  circulation  in  our  valley  of  the 
Mississippi  roused  strong  emotion  in  the  breast  and  nerved 
the  arm  of  toil.  It  was  in  1858  that  the  worth  of  free 
labor  was  thus  vindicated  in  the  preliminary  war  of  the 
conflicting  ideas  of  our  social  organization.  Two  years 
later  free  white  labor  vindicated  its  own  dignity  by  elect 
ing  one  of  its  own  children  to  the  first  place  of  national 
honor,  and  again  a  few  years  later,  having  destroyed  the 
adverse  system,  it  elevated  another  of  its  family,  its  cham- 


LIFE  AND  CHARACTER  OF  HENRY  WILSON.  125 

pion  and  the  author  of  this  speech,  to  the  second  place  of 
national  dignity. 

Mr.  Speaker,  often  in  reading  the  history  of  nations  we 
are  surprised  and  awed  by  some  striking  evidence  of 
Divine  intervention  in  the  adjustment  of  human  affairs. 
The  wealthy,  the  wise,  the  mighty,  overtaken  by  some 
improbable  event,  disappear  from  the  stage,  and  their 
places  are  filled  by  those  who  had  been  the  scorned  or 
oppressed  victims  of  their  power ;  and  the  result  was  not 
foreseen  of  human  contrivance.  But  in  no  country,  except 
in  France,  have  the  events  of  any  quarter  of  a  century  of 
modern  history  been  more  surprising  and  dramatic  than 
in  ours.  That  political  philosophy  and  thorough-bred 
intellect  which  prevailed  here  and  rendered  the  chambers 
of  this  Capitol  illustrious  thirty  years  ago  have  passed  from 
this  theater  with  much  of  the  wisdom  of  that  epoch  which 
made  them  illustrious.  Political  theorists  and  theories, 
doctrinaires  and  their  doctrines,  though  crystallized  in  sol 
emn  resolutions,  dedicated  to  the  names  of  powerful  states, 
and  drawn  by  mighty  political  logicians,  have  gone  down 
before  an  enemy  which  never  sleeps  and  always  advances. 
The  rights  of  humanity,  the  ideas  of  its  progress,  have 
gradually  conquered  or  swept  away  all  obstructions  in  the 
way  of  its  organized  march,  and  we  have  begun  a  new  era 
which  demands  extraordinary  foresight  and  vigilant  care. 
It  is  a  halt  in  the  march  of  our  destiny,  while  the  new 
order  is  established.  We  are  in  the  double  peril  of  re 
action  and  of  rash  action. 


126  ADDRESS  BY  MR.   KASSON   ON   THE 

The  counsel  of  the  man  we  mourn  to-day  would  have 
been  beyond  price  during  this  halting  decade  of  American 
politics  and  society.  He  was  one  of  the  few  living  links 
between  the  public  life  of  twenty  years  ago  and  that  of 
the  passing  day.  His  mental  comprehension  of  the  coun 
try,  both  of  its  interests  and  of  its  sentiments ;  his  unim- 
passioned  judgment;  his  conciliatory  regard  for  all  citizens 
of  the  restored  Republic;  his  greater  love  of  peace  than 
of  violence;  his  sincere  patriotism — all  these  were  quali 
ties  which  gave  him  a  rare  endowment  of  utility  for  our 
times.  As  I  review  his  career,  so  early  and  so  constantly 
and  so  admirably  devoted  to  liberty  and  to  the  state,  it 
seems  that  he  must  have  been  gifted  at  birth  with  the  sen 
timent  which  Pericles  uttered  in  his  oration  at  the  celebra 
tion  of  the  funeral  rites  in  Athens.  Said  the  Greek  orator 
to  the  Athenians,  "You  must  constantly  keep  before  your 
eyes  the  powers  of  the  state,  and  must  love  them.  Look 
for  happiness  in  liberty,  and  for  liberty  in  your  own  cour 
age." 

Mr.  Speaker,  if  the  Congress  of  the  United  States  were 
to  direct  an  inscription  upon  marble  to  portray  in  the 
fewest  and  fittest  words  the  essential  sentiment  of  HENRY 
WILSON'S  career,  they  would  borrow  it  from  Pericles,  and 
would  cut  deep  in  the  hard  rock  the  words:  "He  con 
stantly  kept  before  his  eyes  the  powers  of  the  state,  and 
he  loved  them.  He  sought  for  happiness  in  liberty,  and 
for  liberty  in  his  own  courage." 


LIFE  AND   CHARACTER   OF   HENRY  WILSON.  127 


Address  by  Mr.   Lynch,  of    Mississippi. 


Mr.  Speaker,  not  long  since  the  sad  intelligence  was 
flashed  from  one  end  of  the  country  to  the  other  that 
HENRY  WILSON,  late  Vice-President  of  the  United  States, 
was  dead.  This  sad  news  earned  a  pang  of  sorrow  and 
grief  to  the  heart  of  every  lover  of  his  country  and  to 
every  friend  of  liberty  and  justice.  I  shall  not  attempt 
to  do  justice  to  the  memory  of  this  great  and  good  man. 
I  shall  refer  more  especially  to  his  achievements  as  a 
public  man — as  a  representative  man. 

Mr.  WILSON  was  known  and  recognized  throughout  the 
civilized  world  as  a  man  of  acknowledged  ability  and 
admitted  capacity.  The  period  in  which  he  lived  was 
one  that  enabled  him  to  make  for  himself  a  record  that  is 
in  every  respect  worthy  of  emulation.  He  was  a  man  of 
broad,  liberal,  and  conservative  views  upon  public  ques 
tions.  As  was  said  of  Henry  Clay,  it  can  also  be  said  of 
HENRY  WILSON: 

His  sympathies  embraced  all;  tbe  African  slave,  tbe  Creole  of 
Spanish  America,  the  children  of  renovated  classic  Greece— all 
families  of  men,  without  respect  to  color  or  clime — found  in  his 
expanded  bosom  and  comprehensive  intellect  a  friend  of  their 
elevation  and  amelioration.  Such  ambition  as  that  is  God's 
implantation  in  the  human  heart  for  raising  the  downtrodden 
nations  of  the  earth,  and  fitting  them  for  regenerated  existence  in 
politics,  in  morals,  and  religion. 


128  ADDRESS  BY  MR.  LYNCH  ON  THE 

In  the  person  of  HENRY  WILSON  the  poor  have  lost  a 
true  and  consistent  friend,  the  oppressed  an  able  advocate, 
and  the  country  a  faithful  public  servant.  He  dedicated 
his  entire  life  to  the  cause  of  liberty,  justice,  and  equal 
rights.  He  regarded  the  institution  of  slavery  as  a  foul 
blot  upon  our  system  of  government,  our  civilization,  and 
our  Christianity.  Recognizing  the  fact,  as  he  did,  that 
the  tree  of  liberty  had  been  planted  upon  American  soil 
and  watered  with  the  precious  blood  of  thousands  of 
patriotic  advocates  of  freedom,  that  we  could  not  consist 
ently  tolerate  and  sustain  an  institution  that  was  more 
aggravating  and  disgraceful  than  that  of  which  the  found 
ers  of  our  Government  complained,  and  against  which 
they  were  justified  in  rebelling,  he  did  not  entertain  any 
feeling  of  ill-will  toward  those  who  did  not  agree  with 
him  in  his  views,  nor  toward  those  who  were  personally 
interested  in  perpetuating  the  existence  of  that  institution 
which  he  regarded  as  a  national  disgrace,  and  to  the 
destruction  and  abolition  of  which  he  devoted  a  long, 
useful,  and  successful  life.  But  he  was  actuated  by 
higher,  nobler,  and  purer  motives.  He  regarded  the 
toleration  of  an  institution  which  recognized  the  right  of 
property  in  man  as  not  only  destructive  of  our  system  of 
government,  subversive  of  true  democracy,  and  as  having 
a  tendency  to  demoralize  society,  disturb  the  labor  of  the 
country,  corrupt  the  morals  of  the  masses,  and  retard  the 
progress,  happiness,  and  material  prosperity  of  the  people, 
but  he  also  regarded  it  as  contrary  to  the  laws  of  Deity 


LIFE  AND  CHARACTER  OF  HENRY  WILSON.  129 

and  at  war  with  true  Christian  civilization.  Throughout 
his  useful  and  eventful  life  he  never  failed  to  raise  his 
voice,  to  use  his  pen,  and  to  cast  his  vote  in  the  defense  of 
those  principles  which  he  so  consistently  and  persistently 
advocated.  For  his  labors  in  the  cause  of  humanity  and 
justice  the  name  of  HENRY  WILSON  will  be  gratefully 
remembered  by  generations  yet  unborn. 

During  the  memorable  contest  of  1856,  over  the 
admission  of  Kansas  as  a  State  in  the  Union,  with  the 
friends  of  freedom  upon  one  side  and  the  advocates  of 
slavery  upon  the  other,  HENRY  WILSON  was  one  of  the 
few  members  of  the  United  States  Senate  at  that  time  who 
took  a  bold,  independent,  outspoken  position  in  favor  of 
freedom  for  the  slave.  He  did  not  oppose  slavery  simply 
from  a  stand-point  of  political  expediency,  but  because  he 
believed  it  to  be  morally  and  religiously  wrong,  as  will 
appear  from  the  following  quotation  from  one  of  his  great 
speeches  that  wras  delivered  when  the  Kansas  question 
was  before  the  Senate: 

This  question  of  slavery  in  America  is  the  grand  central  idea 
of  the  country  and  of  this  age.  If  Senators  imagine  that  anything 
that  can  be  done  in  this  or  the  other  House  of  Congress,  at  this 
session  or  at  any  session,  is  to  make  peace  in  this  country  between 
the  great  contending  powers  of  freedom  upon  the  one  side  and 
slavery  upon  the  other,  they  are  greatly  mistaken ;  they  do  not 
comprehend  the  vastness  and  extent  of  the  issues. 

*  *  *  *  *  *  * 

When  we  adopted  the  Constitution  of  the  United  States  we  were 
not  responsible  for  slavery  anywhere.  If  I  had  time,  I  could  pass 
on  from  1789  up  to  this  time  and  show  you  act  after  act,  under  almost 
every  administration,  in  which  you  have  connected  us  with  and 

17  w 


130  ADDRESS  BY  MR.  LYNCH  ON  THE 

made  us  responsible  for  slavery.  This  legislation  has  been  in 
violation  of  the  policy  adopted  by  the  framers  of  the  Constitution 
and  the  men  who  inaugurated  this  Government.  Go  back  and 
undo  this ;  disconnect  us  from  slavery ;  put  no  responsibility  on  us  j 
and  then  our  consciences  and  our  judgments  will  be  clear.  If 
slavery  is  wrong,  as  I  believe  it  to  be — and  I  believe  it  to  be  a  crime 
against  man  and  a  sin  toward  God,  and  I  believe  that  to  be  the 
sentiment  of  the  free  States — it  is  not  our  crime,  it  is  not  our  sin. 

HENRY  WILSON  was  an  ardent  and  devoted  lover  of  his 
country.  As  chairman  of  the  Senate  Committee  on 
Military  Affairs  during  the  late  war,  he  displayed  such 
remarkable  ability  as  to  make  his  power  and  influence 
felt,  acknowledged,  and  respected  throughout  the  country. 
His  advice  and  counsel  were  often  sought  by  the  Govern 
ment,  and  seldom  if  ever  rejected.  His  admonitions  and 
remonstrances  were  seldom  disregarded  but  often  heeded, 
and  never  disrespected.  He  was  justly  looked  upon  by 
the  country  as  one  of  the  chief  pillars  of  the  Government 
during  that  important  period  of  our  country's  history. 
His  able  speeches,  his  patriotic  utterances,  his  statesman 
like  declarations,  had  the  effect  of  giving  renewed  life 
and  vigor  to  the  cause  of  the  Union  and  of  strengthening 
the  Union  soldiers  upon  the  field  of  battle.  The  Union 
soldier  knew  that  in  the  person  of  HENRY  WILSON  he  had 
a  true  friend,  an  able  advocate,  and  a  strong  defender. 

Since  the  beginning  of  reconstruction  HENRY  WILSON 
has  occupied  a  very  conspicuous  position.  He  was  among 
the  first  to  advocate  the  adoption  of  a  broad,  liberal,  and 
comprehensive  system  of  reconstruction.  I  well  remember 
his  pathetic  appeals  to  the  old-line  whigs  of  Virginia, 


LIFE  AND  CHARACTER  OF  HENRY  WILSON.  131 

shortly  after  the  adoption  of  the  congressional  plan  of 
reconstruction,  to  join  with  the  newly  enfranchised  element 
of  the  grand  old  Commonwealth  in  rehabilitating  their 
State  government  upon  a  firm,  lasting,  and  solid  founda 
tion.  He  appealed  to  them  to  lay  aside  their  passions 
and  prejudices  of  race,  the  existence  of  which  is  known 
and  generally  admitted  to  be  the  result  of  the  toleration 
of  slavery  and  not  from  natural  causes,  and  join  in  with 
this  new  element  that  had  been  incorporated  in  the  body- 
politic  of  the  Commonwealth  in  reconstructing  their  State 
government  upon  a  basis  that  would  prevent  a  repetition 
of  previous  mistakes.  His  advice  to  the  old-line  whigs 
of  Virginia  was  no  less  applicable  to  the  same  element  in 
every  one  of  the  States  similarly  situated.  It  is  doubtless 
a  source  of  serious  regret  to  thousands  of  those  he 
addressed  that  his  advice  was  not  accepted  by  them. 
They  now  recognize  the  fact  that  his  object  was  to 
prevent  the  formation  of  parties  upon  the  race  issue.  He 
could  foresee  the  disastrous  results  that  would  follow  a 
bitter  political  contest  between  antagonistic  elements, 
whether  it  be  based  upon  race,  religion,  or  nationality. 
He  could  foresee  that,  if  reconstruction  was  made  an 
accomplished  fact  upon  the  basis  of  antagonism  between 
the  two  great  elements  of  which  southern  society  is  com 
posed,  passion  and  prejudice  would  take  the  place  of 
reason  and  argument,  and  that  the  material  interests  of 
the  people,  the  development  of  the  resources  of  the 
country,  and  the  cultivation  of  friendly  relations  between 


132  ADDRESS  BY  MB.  LYNCH  ON  THE 

the  sections  would  be  made  subordinate  to  the  ambition 
of  unscrupulous  politicians.  The  results  that  have  fol 
lowed  the  rejection  of  Mr.  WILSON'S  advice  by  those  to 
whom  it  was  given  have  very  clearly  demonstrated  the 
wisdom  of  his  position.  The  serious  apprehensions  enter 
tained  by  him  as  to  the  disastrous  results  that  would  be 
likely  to  follow  the  adoption  of  any  other  course  have 
been  unfortunately  realized  to  an  extent  that  is  almost 
irreparable.  It  cannot  be  denied  by  those  who  are  at  all 
familiar  with  southern  politics  that  the  present  unfortunate 
condition  of  affairs  in  that  section  of  our  country  is  due  more 
to  the  existence  of  this  antagonism  between  the  two  great 
elements  in  the  South  than  to  the  faults  and  shortcomings 
of  local,  temporary,  and  periodical  administrations.  I 
believe  there  are  but  few  who  will  not  agree  with  me  in 
asserting  that  had  the  views  of  HENRY  WILSON  been 
accepted  and  generally  acquiesced  in,  the  Southern  States 
would  be  in  a  prosperous  and  flourishing  condition  to-day. 
During  the  last  two  or  three  years  of  Mr.  WILSON'S  life 
he  saw  proper  to  advance  a  few  ideas  upon  what  may  be 
called  the  southern  question,  which  subjected  him  to  a 
little  unfavorable  criticism  on  the  part  of  a  few  of  those 
who  are  identified  with  the  same  political  organization  of 
which  he  was  a  distinguished  leader;  but  they  evidently 
did  not  understand  his  purposes  nor  appreciate  his  motives. 
Those  who  knew  HENRY  WILSON,  who  have  carefully 
watched  his  career  since  the  beginning  of  reconstruction, 
could  see  in  his  recent  utterances  upon  that  subject  the 


LIFE  AND  CHAKACTEE  OF  HENRY  WILSON.  133 

same  consistent  determination  to  bring  about,  if  possible, 
a  union  of  the  best  elements  from  the  two  great  masses  of 
which  southern  society  is  composed.  They  could  see  the 
same  manifestations  of  an  extreme  anxiety  on  his  part  to 
bring  about  harmony  and  a  reciprocity  of  feeling  between 
the  two  races  in  the  South,  which  all  must  admit  is  the 
most  effectual  if  not  the  only  remedy  for  the  evils  com 
plained  of  in  southern  politics. 

HENRY  WILSON  was  a  conscientious  public  man  and  a 
true  Christian.  His  character  for  honesty  and  integrity 
could  never  be  questioned.  His  public  career,  though 
long  and  eventful,  was  one  that  was  particularly  free  from 
everything  that  was  impure,  or  even  suspicious.  His  ex 
ample  is  one  that  is  in  every  particular  worthy  of  emula 
tion.  The  only  thing  that  is  consoling  in  the  death  of 
this  great  and  good  man  is  the  fact  that  he  left  behind  him 
a  glorious  record,  and  that,  having  lived  the  life  of  a  pure 
and  devoted  Christian,  he  was  enabled  to  say,  "I  have 
fought  a  good  fight,  I  have  finished  my  course,  I  have 
kept  the  faith."  Let  us  hope,  Mr.  Speaker,  that  we  may 
live  the  life  that  WILSON  lived,  and  die  the  death  he  died. 


134  ADDRESS  BY  MR.  HURLBUT  ON  THE 


Address  by    Mr.  Wurlbut,  of  Illinois. 


I  shall  not  undertake,  Mr.  Speaker,  to  touch  the  details 
of  the  life  of  HENRY  WILSON,  to  delineate  his  character, 
nor  to  do  more  than  refer  to  his  eminent  public  service. 
That  will  be  better  done  by  men  who  stood  nearer  to  him 
in  his  life,  more  competent  to  analyze  the  secret  springs 
of  his  success  and  the  real  value  of  his  work.  I  prefer  to 
deal  rather  on  this  occasion  with  the  general  effect  which 
the  man  himself  has  produced  upon  the  thoughtful  people 
who  knew  him  only  by  the  broad  and  general  features  of 
character  as  these  framed  and  molded  his  public  course 
and  career. 

There  are  two  names  which  go  straight  to  the  heart  of 
that  grand  mass  of  thinkers  and  workers  who  constitute 
the  American  people.  Abraham  Lincoln  and  HENRY 
WILSON,  more  than  all  others  of  our  time,  command  the 
sympathy  and  hold  the  love  of  the  people  of  the  Union; 
both  children  of  adversity,  both  toilers  from  their  infancy, 
both  winning  their  way  by  dint  of  brain-work  and  the 
dominion  of  pure  character  to  the  high  places  of  the  Re 
public.  Differing  in  many  essential  qualities,  contrasted 
in  many  elements  of  power,  alike  in  the  capacity  of 


LIFE  AND  CHARACTER  OF  HENRY  WILSON.  135 

thorough  conviction  and  of  unfaltering  action  in  the 
straight  line  of  such  conviction,  each  colored  and  per 
vaded  by  the  peculiar  atmosphere  of  his  special  surround 
ings,  both  fearlessly,  intensely,  absolutely  American,  such 
men  could  only  be  reared  in  one  country;  such  men  could 
only  have  come  to  the  front  in  one  epoch  of  that  country. 

HENRY  WILSON,  by  the  force  of  patient  labor,  of  solid 
will,  of  fearless  belief,  of  effort  to  know  the  right  and  to 
do  the  right,  clove  asunder  the  icy  barriers  which  society 
had  placed  between  the  New  Hampshire  boy  and  the 
Massachusetts  Senator.  He  had  the  heroism  to  stand  by 
the  unpopular  if  he  believed  he  stood  by  the  true — a  hero 
ism  nearly  as  rare  now  as  it  was  then — and  he  had  the 
rare  satisfaction  in  his  own  life-time  of  seeing  the  right 
thing  pass  from  opprobrium  and  opposition  to  success  and 
accomplishment. 

From  his  early  days  he  abhorred  slavery  as  deserving 
curse  from  God  and  man,  and  he  struck  straight  at  the 
heart  of  the  hoary  iniquity  enthroned  on  the  prejudice  of 
customs  and  buttressed  though  it  was  by  unholy  alliance 
of  church  and  state.  His  clear  moral  vision  was  clouded 
by  no  cunningly-wrought  veil;  no  device,  no  subterfuge, 
no  cheat  in  word  or  action,  could  dim  the  anatomic  eye 
which  detected  and  exposed  the  loathsome  lines  that  indi 
cated  disease  and  death  in  the  painted  harlot  who  queened 
it  over  the  fairest  portion  of  the  Republic.  The  strict 
constructionists  of  that  day,  North  and  South,  denounced 
him.  Pilate  and  Herod  struck  hands,  but  the  brave  heart, 


136  ADDRESS  BY  MB.  HURLBUT  ON  THE 

strong  from  continuous  struggle,  flinched  in  no  wise  from 
the  task  self-imposed  and  self-sustained.  He  lived  to  see 
the  dead  carcass  of  the  great  wrong  buried  forever  out  of 
the  sight  of  men,  and  the  once  blackened  bosom  of  the 
nation  pure  again  from  that  ancient  sin.  He  lived  to  do 
his  part  as  a  man  should  in  the  physical  struggle — the 
trial  of  colossal  forces  that  shook  our  broad  territory  and 
made  its  earth-fast  foundations  tremble  with  the  step  of 
uncounted  hosts.  He  saw  the  authority  of  the  Constitu 
tion  and  the  supremacy  of  law  vindicated;  he  saw  those 
who  rashly  took  the  sword  punished  by  the  sword;  he 
heard  tlie  sounding  hammer-blows  of  a  hundred  battles, 
as  in  the  white  heat  of  the  rebellion  they  welded  the 
nation  into  indissoluble  unity.  He  heard  the  glorious 
sentiment  of  his  great  predecessor,  "The  Union,  now  and 
forever,  one  and  inseparable,"  pronounced  as  the  grand 
result  of  the  tremendous  conflict,  and  wrought  into  the 
life  and  conscience  of  millions  of  his  countrymen  as  the 
one  primal,  controlling  fact  before  which  all  others  were 
dwarfed  into  insignificance.  Filled  himself  with  the  largest 
view  of  this  intense  nationality,  he  rejoiced  that  it  filled 
the  heart  of  the  nation. 

As  Senator,  as  chairman  of  the  Military  Committee,  he 
did  much  valuable  work,  work  which  the  country  hardly 
appreciates  yet ;  and  it  stands  to  his  eternal  credit  that  in 
the  exercise  of  the  wide  discretion  and  vast  power  held 
by  him  in  that  capacity  no  sordid  nor  selfish  nor  sectional 
preference  ever  impaired  the  justice  of  his  action. 


LIFE   AND   CHARACTER   OP  HENRY  WILSON.  137 

He  took  his  part  fairly  and  well  in  all  the  legislation 
which  followed  the  war ;  nor  have  I  ever  heard  any  man 
say  that  in  anything  done  or  said  by  him  in  all  that  time 
there  was  personal  bitterness  or  desire  for  revenge. 

He  was  active  as  a  politician,  for  he  believed  in  the 
necessity  of  vigorous  and  enlightened  political  action. 
He  made  enemies,  as  all  strong  men  do ;  but  even  this 
time  in  which  we  live,  prolific  in  slander  and  prompt  to 
accuse,  never  charged  HENEY  WILSON  with  dishonest  act 
or  impure  motive. 

Not  standing  in  the  rank  of  our  greatest  men,  measured 
by  intellectual  standards,  his  influence  was  due  more  to 
faith  in  his  personal  character,  his  devotion  to  right,  than 
to  pre-eminent  mental  stature. 

He  did  the  work  set  before  him  to  do  with  the  same 
good  faith  and  the  same  steady  energy  with  which  he 
filled  out  the  coarser  tasks  of  his  early  manhood,  and  the 
people  for  whom  he  labored  so  long  and  well  heartily 
unite  in  the  plaudits  of  "  good  and  faithful  servant,"  as 
they  look  back  upon  his  long  career  of  public  service  and 
feel  that  it  is  well  with  any  people  when  from  its  institu 
tions  and  modes  of  life  and  thought  can  spring  such  a  life 
and  such  a  character  as  that  of  HENRY  WILSON. 


18  w 


138  ADDEESS  BY  MB.  REAGAN  ON  THE 


Address  by    Mr.   Reagan,  of  Texas. 


Some  days  ago  it  was  suggested  that  I  should  take  a 
part  in  the  addresses  on  this  occasion.  I  had  then,  on 
account  of  the  pressure  of  other  duties,  reluctantly  to 
decline  to  do  so.  Until  I  saw  the  list  to-day  of  those  who 
were  to  make  addresses  I  did  not  know  that  it  was  antici 
pated  I  should  say  anything  on  this  occasion,  and  what  I 
do  say  shall  be  limited  to  stating  an  incident  illustrative 
of  the  character  and  virtues  and  the  charity  of  the  great 
man  whose  memory  is  this  day  being  honored. 

My  first  personal  acquaintance  with  Mr.  WILSON  was  in 
1857,  and  our  associations  were  such  as  might  spring  up 
between  two  men  of  different  ages  and  different  positions, 
and  differing  in  politics.  At  the  close  of  the  war  I  was 
made,  with  others,  a  prisoner,  and  was  taken,  with  Mr. 
Alexander  H.  Stephens,  now  a  member  of  this  House,  to 
Fort  Warren.  In  the  fall  of  the  year  1865,  when  we 
were  released,  I  immediately  returned  to  the  city  of  New 
York,  and  while  spending  a  few  days  there  I  met  with 
Mr.  WILSON,  who  was  then  engaged  in  canvassing  the 
State  of  New  York.  We  had  a  somewhat  free  conversa 
tion  about  the  condition  in  which  the  country  then  was, 


LIFE  AND  CHARACTER  OF  HENRY  WILSON.  139 

and  especially  about  the  condition  of  that  section  of  the 
country  in  which  I  lived.  A  short  time  before  that,  feel 
ing  that  I  comprehended  the  condition  of  the  country  and 
what  would  be  necessary  for  the  future,  not  only  of  the 
southern  portion  but  of  all  of  it,  I  had  addressed  a  com 
munication  to  the  people  of  Texas  from  my  prison,  urging 
them  to  accept  promptly  the  inevitable  results  of  the  war 
as  the  shortest  and  surest  way  to  bring  to  an  end  the  evils 
which  had  sprung  from  it,  advising  them  not  only  to 
recognize  the  freedom  of  the  slaves,  but  to  secure  to  them 
the  protection  of  the  law  and  to  concede  to  them  the 
qualified  right  of  suffrage.  This  had  been  published,  and 
had  come  back  and  been  read  by  Senator  WILSON.  It 
became  the  subject  of  conversation.  He  asked  my  opinion 
as  to  whether  the  people  of  Texas  and  the  South  would 
accept  the  policy  indicated  in  that  communication.  I  had 
to  tell  him  that  I  could  only  express  the  hope  they  might 
do  so ;  that  for  more  than  four  years  I  had  not  been  in 
the  State  in  which  I  lived  or  mingled  with  the  people  of 
that  State.  He  then  said — and  I  repeat  it  now  because  it 
is  in  accordance  with  what  others,  his  personal  friends 
and  acquaintances,  say  of  his  character ;  for  I  would  not 
if  it  were  different  from  that  speak  of  what  was  merely  a 
private  conversation — he  then  said  he  felt  it  was  a  duty  I 
owed  to  Texas  and  the  South,  as  well  as  the  rest  of  the 
country,  to  return  home  and  urge  the  people  to  adopt  the 
policy  which  I  had  suggested.  He  said  to  me  at  the  same 
time  that  if  the  people  of  Texas  and  of  the  South  generally 


140  ADDRESS  BY  MR.  REAGAN  ON  THE 

would  for  themselves  adopt  that  policy  he  would  accept 
it  as  a  final  basis  of  adjustment  of  the  remaining  differ 
ences  between  the  North  and  the  South,  and  would  urge 
its  adoption  in  the  Senate  of  the  United  States,  with  the 
exception  that  he  would  ask  that  the  cases  of  one  or  two 
hundred  of  the  leading  men  should  stand  over,  and  that 
in  addition  to  that  which  I  had  suggested  he  would  urge, 
if  they  saw  proper  to  take  that  course,  that  all  except  this 
one  or  two  hundred  he  referred  to  should  be  at  once 
relieved  from  all  liability  on  account  of  having  partici 
pated  in  the  war. 

In  the  condition  in  which  I  was  then  placed,  with  the 
feelings  I  then  experienced,  remembering  that  I  was 
returning  to  a  desolated  country  and  a  conquered  people 
to  mingle  again  with  them,  looking  abroad  and  seeing  the 
passions  which  the  war  had  aroused,  remembering  the 
earnest,  active  part  which  that  distinguished  Senator  had 
taken  on  the  one  side  while  he  knew  that  I  had  been  as 
earnestly  engaged  on  the  other,  I  could  not  but  feel 
that  there  was  something  of  a  grand  magnanimity  in  his 
conduct,  something  of  kindness  and  of  generosity  in  his 
expressions,  which  met  with  an  earnest  and  sincere 
response  from  me. 

I  may  say  one  other  thing.  He  then  informed  me  that 
while  Mr.  Stephens  and  myself  were  in  prison  at  Fort 
Warren  he  had  come  from  his  home  in  Massachusetts 
twice  to  Washington  to  secure  our  release,  not  on  account 
of  any  application  which  had  been  made  to  him  by  us 


LIFE  AND  CHARACTER  OF  HENRY  WILSON.  141 

for  that  kindness,  but  because  he  felt  that  there  was  no 
necessity  for  retaining  us  there;  for  he  did  not  feel  any 
spirit  of  revenge,  and,  as  was  disclosed  in  the  conversa 
tion  we  then  had,  he  felt,  as  his  great  colaborer  Horace 
Greeley  had  felt,  that  it  was  not  his  desire  in  freeing  the 
slaves  of  the  South  to  make  slaves  of  those  who  had  been 
free  in  the  South.  He  did  not  wish  to  see  the  passions  of 
the  war  protracted,  and  urged  as  a  reason  why  I  should 
endeavor  to  secure  in  the  portion  of  the  country  where  I 
lived  the  policy  I  had  indicated  that  the  adoption  of  such 
a  policy  was  the  only  thing  that  could  avert  military 
government  there,  the  consequences  that  would  spring 
from  it,  and  dangers  which  might  result  to  the  Union 
from  having  to  control  large  sections  of  the  country  by 
military  authority. 

Mr.  Speaker,  words  so  spoken  to  one  situated  as  I  was 
it  will  be  understood  would  make  an  impression  which 
has  gone  with  me  from  then  till  now.  After  my  return 
home,  when  my  friends  in  Texas  who  desired  to  be 
relieved  at  Washington,  and  who  had  no  acquaintance 
here,  applied  to  me  to  see  if  there  was  some  person  here 
who  would  take  an  interest  in  their  behalf,  I  did  not 
hesitate  on  more  than  one  occasion  to  write  to  Senator 
WILSON  on  their  behalf,  and  I  never  wrote  to  him  without 
getting  a  prompt  and  kindly  answer,  indicating  a  desire 
to  do  what  he  could  for  the  interests  of  our  people. 
Whatever  differences  in  politics  may  have  existed  in  the 
past,  and  however  divergent  our  views  may  have  been  on 


142  ADDRESS  BY  MR.  REAGAN  ON  THE 

great  questions;  however  earnestly  we  may  have  struggled 
on  opposite  sides  in  the  days  in  which  we  had  opposed 
each  other,  expressions  like  these  and  kindness  like  this 
made  me  feel  that  these  were  the  expressions  and  the 
kindness  of  a  sincere  and  just  heart,  and  it  makes  me 
feel  sincere  gratification  that  I  have  the  privilege  of  saying 
so  in  this  presence  on  this  occasion. 

I  am  not  qualified  by  association  or  information  to 
dwell  upon  the  historic  features  of  his  character,  nor  is  it 
necessary  that  I  should  do  so  if  I  were,  after  the  eloquent 
portraitures  of  his  character  which  have  been  made  upon 
this  floor  to-day.  I  did  not  rise  to  make  an  address.  I 
only  rose  to  speak  of  these  incidents,  and  to  speak  of 
them  as  having  made  me  feel  a  sincere  respect  for  him 
while  living,  and  feeling  that  his  death,  occurring  when  it 
did,  was  a  misfortune  to  our  common  country.  A  year 
ago,  sir,  when  Mr.  WILSON  was  making  a  tour  through 
the  Southern  States,  the  people  of  Texas  in  large  numbers, 
and  with  whom  I  united,  urgently  invited  him  to  come  to 
Texas  to  enable  us  to  testify  our  feeling  of  respect  for  his 
generous  and  manly  conduct  toward  us  in  the  hour  of  our 
calamity  and  misfortune. 


LIFE  AND  CHARACTER  OP  HENRY  WILSON.  143 


Address  by    Mr.   Joyce,  of  Vermont 


Mr.  Speaker,  again  a  dark  shadow  covers  the  Capitol 
and  veils  its  lofty  Dome  in  gloom.  Relentless  death  has 
again  entered  the  Senate  House,  and  with  remorseless 
fury  struck  down  the  chief. 

HENRY  WILSON  is  dead.  His  last  work  has  been  per 
formed,  his  last  duty  discharged,  and  he  has  gone  to  his 
reward. 

To-day  a  nation  mourns  its  loss  and  bows  in  grief  at 
its  bereavement;  from  Champlain  to  the  Gulf;  from 
Faneuil  Hall  to  the  golden  shores,  the  Republic  is 
shrouded  in  mourning,  and  its  mighty  heart  ceases  for  a 
moment  its  pulsations  while  humanity  places  the  chaplet 
upon  the  tomb  of  the  philanthropist,  the  patriot  statesman, 
and  the  Christian. 

0,  what  a  wealth  of  sorrow;  what  a  majesty  of  woe! 

Among  the  millions  who  gather  in  sorrow  around  his 
open  grave,  to  pay  the  last  sad  tribute  to  his  memory, 
come  the  brave  and  patriotic  people  of  my  own  State,  and 
claim  a  near  approach  to  that  sacred  spot. 

Vermont  comes  to-day  to  add  one  more  leaf  to  the 
garland  that  decorates  his  tomb. 

Outside  the  limits  of  the  noble  Commonwealth  in  which 


144  ADDEESS  BY  ME.  JOYCE   ON  THE 

repose  his  ashes — a  State  so  rich  in  historical  events,  in 
clustering-  memories,  in  great  names,  and  in  noble  men — 
there  is  no  spot  in  the  broad  universe  where  he  was  more 
loved  and  respected  and  where  his  memory  is  more 
honored  and  revered  than  in  the  State  I  have  the  honor 
in  part  to  represent. 

His  name  is  as  familiar  as  those  of  her  own  sons  in 
every  cottage  and  cabin  that  nestles  among  her  green  hills. 

It  seemed  to  me  that  it  would  be  eminently  proper 
that  the  descendants  of  Slade  and  Harrington,  pioneers 
in  the  cause  of  civil  liberty,  should  come  to  the  humble 
tomb  at  Natick  as  near  mourners  of  the  illustrious  dead. 

The  doctrine  of  human  freedom  and  the  political 
equality  of  all  men  before  the  law  is  as  firmly  and  deeply 
rooted  in  the  hearts  of  her  people  to-day  as  it  was  on  the 
morning  when  Allen  was  doomed  to  an  immortality  of 
fame  and  Stark  drove  the  mercenaries  of  King  George, 
routed  and  bleeding,  from  the  plains  of  Bennington. 

The  whole  pathway  of  history  sparkles  with  the  names 
of  illustrious  men  and  the  noble  deeds  of  heroes  and 
patriots;  but  it  was  reserved  to  the  nineteenth  century  to 
furnish  the  most  remarkable  body  of  men  that  has  ever 
existed  in  the  world's  annals. 

Garrison,  and  Sumner,  and  Hale,  and  Lovejoy,  and 
Giddings,  with  whom  were  associated  Slade,  and  Nichol 
son,  and  Fletcher,  and  Shaffter,  and  Marsh  of  my  own 
State,  were  among  the  leaders  and  heroes  of  the  old  anti- 
slavery  party — a  party  which  embodied  the  very  essence 


LIFE  AND  CHARACTER  OF  HENRY  WILSON.  145 

and  spirit  of  integrity,  perseverance,  independence,  honest 
convictions,  high  and  exalted  moral  courage,  and  genuine 
public  virtue.  With  these  men  HENRY  WILSON  was  early 
enlisted  in  the  great  work  of  emancipation  and  enfran 
chisement,  to  which  he  devoted  every  energy  of  body 
and  mind  during  his  whole  life.  He  espoused  this  un 
popular  cause  when  it  required  physical  as  well  as  moral 
courage  to  do  it. 

With  Collamer  and  Foot  he  bore  the  heat  and  burdens 
of  the  day ;  with  them  he  bore  the  vexation  and  ignominy 
of  a  temporary  defeat,  and  with  them  at  last  rejoiced  in  a 
complete  and  glorious  victory.  And  the  last  public  act  of 
his  life  was  an  eloquent  and  stirring  address  to  Vermont's 
survivors  of  the  great  conflict,  rejoicing  with  them  in  its 
grand  results,  and  imparting  words  of  encouragement  and 
precepts  of  wisdom  by  which  to  shape  the  present  and 
guide  them  in  the  future. 

New  Hampshire  may  claim  the  honor  of  his  birthplace, 
Massachusetts  his  home  and  last  resting-place,  but  his  un 
tarnished  fame  and  the  history  of  his  noble  life  cannot  be 
circumscribed  by  State  lines.  It  is  the  nation's  legacy 
and  the  rich  heritage  of  the  Republic. 

The  period  of  Mr.  WILSON'S  life  was  in  some  respects  the 
golden  age  of  our  country's  history.  It  was  a  time  which 
called  for  men  of  iron  nerve,  of  settled  conscientious  con 
victions,  and  manly  independence. 

It  was  a  time  which  demanded  men  who  were  not  afraid 
to  do  right  regardless  of  the  consequences ;  who  were 


19  w 


110  ADDRESS  BY  MR.   JOYCE   ON   THE 

willing  to  bear  the  taunts,  sneers,  and  persecutions  of  the 
champions  of  an  accursed  institution  intrenched  behind 
power,  wealth,  learning,  influence,  and  religious  bigotry. 

Such  a  man  was  found  in  HENRY  WILSON  ;  a  man  for 
tunate  in  his  origin  and  useful  life,  and  equally  fortunate 
in  the  time  and  place  of  his  death. 

In  early  life  he  was  the  child  of  poverty  and  domestic 
sorrow ;  he  was  cast  out  upon  the  cold  charities  of  the 
world  and  left  upon  his  own  resources ;  he  labored  and 
struggled,  buffeting  the  world's  adverse  fortunes  and 
storms  with  a  strong  arm  and  an  honest  heart,  strong  in 
his  own  conscious  rectitude ;  and  in  God's  own  good  time 
was  ushered  at  once  into  the  public  arena,  to  combat  with 
intellectual  gladiatorial  champions  scarcely  excelled  in  the 
world's  history. 

Manfully  he  bore  himself  in  the  great  struggle,  battling 
for  the  right  against  wealth,  arrogance,  and  power.  Dis 
daining  the  codes  and  dogmas  of  honor,  falsely  so  called, 
he  planted  himself  upon  the  eternal  principles  of  self- 
defense  and  personal  preservation  until  victory  crowned 
his  efforts  and  the  voice  of  his  country  called  him  to  the 
second  position  in  the  nation. 

Mr.  WILSON'S  industry  was  untiring  and  knew  no 
bounds.  He  allowed  himself  neither  recreation  nor  re 
pose,  but,  amid  all  the  vast  and  multiplied  labors  of  his 
official  position,  devoted  himself  with  unfaltering  courage 
to  the  second  great  work  of  his  life,  the  gathering  up  and 
preserving  the  facts  and  fragments  relating  to  the  rise  and 


LIFE  AND  CHARACTER  OF  HENRY  WILSON.  147 

fall  of  the  slave  power  in  America,  in  order  that  some 
future  Bancroft  may  write  the  history  of  that  gigantic 
struggle  and  glorious  victory.  The  work  he  performed 
was  immense,  and  a  just  and  generous  posterity  will  award 
him  the  meed  of  praise  which  is  justly  and  honestly  his 
due  for  his  invaluable  services  in  the  cause  of  justice  and 
equal  rights. 

Of  his  long  and  honorable  career  in  the  National  Legis 
lature  I  need  not  speak ;  it  is  a  part  of  the  history  of  our 
country,  and  the  world  knows  it  by  heart. 

His  herculean  labors  at  the  head  of  the  Senate  Com 
mittee  on  Military  Affairs  during  the  war  for  the  supremacy 
of  the  Government  are  beyond  description,  and  can  be  fully 
known  only  by  those  who  were  his  associates  in  anxious 
solicitude  and  toil. 

The  great  Lincoln  leaned  upon  him  in  the  dark  hours 
as  a  firm  support,  while  every  pulsation  of  his  heart,  dur 
ing  the  whole  term  of  his  official  life,  was  for  the  honor 
and  welfare  of  the  Eepublic,  for  human  freedom,  and  the 
emancipation  and  enfranchisement  of  the  oppressed. 

Among  the  foremost  of  the  patriot  band  to  whom,  under 
God,  we  are  indebted  for  universal  liberty,  peace,  and  a 
redeemed  and  reunited  country,  stood  HENRY  WILSON. 
He  never  flinched  or  faltered;  wrhen  the  hearts  of  the  timid 
quaked  with  fear  he  was  always  hopeful  and  courageous; 
when  others  doubted  and  turned  back  he  stood  firm  as  a 
rock  in  mid-ocean  until  the  storm  had  spent  its  fury  and 
peace  again  brooded  over  the  face  of  the  great  deep. 


148  ADDRESS  BY    MR.   JOYCE   ON   THE 

When  grim-visaged  war  had  smoothed  his  wrinkled 
front,  and  the  dark  clouds  which  had  lowered  upon  our 
country  were  in  the  deep  bosom  of  the  ocean  buried,  he 
was  among  the  first  to  counsel  forgiveness  and  brotherly 
love ;  and  no  man  rejoiced  more  than  he  did  in  the  era  of 
good  feeling  inaugurated  at  Lexington  and  Concord, 
Ticonderoga  and  Bunker  Hill,  at  the  late  centennial  cele 
bration;  and  he  looked  forward  with  a  longing  anxiety 
and  joyous  delight  to  the  great  exposition  at  Philadelphia, 
in  1876,  when  he  hoped  to  witness  the  final  burial  of  the 
last  sad  relic  of  the  great  civil  strife,  and  the  principles  it 
had  forever  settled,  and  which  he  had  helped  so  much  to 
crystallize  and  establish,  should  be  honestly  and  in  good 
faith  accepted  by  all,  the  rights  of  all  men  everywhere 
respected,  and  peace  and  good-fellowship  once  more  reign 
throughout  the  whole  length  and  breadth  of  our  favored 
Republic. 

Vice-President  WILSON  was  not,  perhaps,  great  as  an 
orator,  a  scholar,  or  a  statesman ;  but  he  was  great  in  in 
dustry,  in  the  power  of  intense  and  continued  application, 
in  toil,  in  courage,  in  assiduous,  conscientious  devotion  to 
duty. 

He  was  great  in  honesty  and  integrity,  in  his  moral 
courage,  and  in  the  faith  and  practice  of  Christianity. 

He  marched,  by  the  power  of  his  own  will,  his  indom 
itable  industry,  and  his  patriotic  impulses,  from  the  bench 
of  the  shoemaker  to  the  Senate  of  the  United  States;  from 
his  humble  calling  at  Natick  to  the  responsible  duties  at 


LIFE  AND  CHARACTER   OF  HENRY  WILSON.  149 

Washington.  In  all  his  conduct,  both  public  and  private, 
conscience  was  his  constant  monitor  and  guiding  star.  No 
hope  of  earthly  reward  or  preferment  could  swerve  him 
from  the  path  of  duty  and  no  threats  could  silence  his  voice 
or  cause  him  to  abate  his  ardor  in  the  great  work  to  which 
he  had  consecrated  his  life.  Amid  the  storms  and  tem 
pests  of  political  life,  when  the  loved  and  honored  were 
suspected  and  shaken  like  a  reed,  he  stood  proudly  forth, 
pure  and  undefiled.  No  stain  of  corruption  ever  tarnished 
the  luster  of  his  bright  escutcheon  and  no  bribe  ever  left 
its  plague-spot  upon  his  hand.  Surrounded  during  his 
official  life  with  the  blandishments  of  power  and  the  fasci 
nations  of  wealth,  he  preserved  his  character,  and  died 
comparatively  poor.  While  many  of  the  gifted  and 
mighty  were  swallowed  up  in  the  whirlpool  of  dissipation 
and  crime,  he  walked  among  them  with  a  charmed  life, 
and  came  out  of  the  furnace  with  not  so  much  as  the  smell 
of  fire  upon  his  garments. 

Every  noble  cause  and  genuine  reform  found  in  him  an 
eloquent  advocate  and  an  ardent  champion.  He  repre 
sented  in  an  eminent  degree  the  noble  elements  of  our 
American  nationality.  His  life  was  the  natural  and  gen 
erous  outgrowth  of  our  free  institutions  and  of  our  higher 
and  purer  civilization.  His  character  and  history  demon 
strate  what  industry,  will,  determination,  and  integrity 
can  accomplish,  and  show  the  value  and  advantage  of 
steady  perseverance  and  continued  and  honest  adherence 
to  conscientious  convictions. 


150  ADDRESS  BY  MR.  JOYCE  ON  THE 

He  lived  to  see  the  great  work  of  his  life  accomplished : 
the  political  equality  of  all  men  securely  imbedded  in  the 
organic  law,  and  the  emancipated  and  enfranchised  bond 
man  standing  as  the  honored  representatives  of  American 
freemen  in  both  branches  of  the  National  Legislature. 

If  he  had  ambition,  it  was  an  ambition  to  do  right,  to 
advance  the  welfare  of  his  fellow-men,  and  be  reckoned 
among  the  world's  benefactors.  If  he  desired  position,  it 
was  because  it  would  enable  him  to  accomplish  more  for 
humanity  and  render  greater  service  to  his  country. 

His  convictions  were  clear  cut  and  as  firm  as  the  granite 
hills  of  his  native  State ;  he  believed  in  political  parties, 
and  loved  his  own  almost  to  idolatry ;  but  no  partisan 
blindness  prevented  his  seeing  its  errors,  and  no  timid, 
time-serving  policy  could  deter  him  from  pointing  them 
out  and  demanding  their  correction. 

If  he  had  faults,  they  were  of  the  negative  kind,  and 
were  so  mixed  up  with  bold  and  generous  deeds  that  the 
world  could  scarce  discern  them. 

It  is  well  that  he  died  under  the  roof  and  almost  upon 
the  very  spot  where  he  had  won  his  earthly  laurels  and 
helped  to  achieve  one  of  the  greatest  victories  recorded 
upon  the  pages  of  human  history.  With  worldly  honors 
thick  upon  him  and  the  prayers  of  a  grateful  and  generous 
nation  filling  the  whole  land,  his  spirit  took  its  flight  from 
the  portals  of  the  National  Capitol,  with  the  shackles 
struck  from  four  millions  of  bondmen,  the  shining  record 
of  a  well-spent  life,  and  a  vital  and  living  faith  in  a 


LIFE  AND  CHARACTER  OF  HENRY  WILSON.  151 

crucified  Saviour,  to  gain  him  admittance  to  the  golden 
city.  Tender  hands  and  loving  hearts  were  there  in  the 
trying  hour  to  smooth  his  pathway  to  the  tomb  and  watch 
the  precious  sands  as  they  gently  ebbed  away.  And  then, 
as  was  so  beautifully  said  of  another  of  Massachusetts 
illustrious  sons : 

With  solemn  steps  and  sorrowing  hearts,  they  bore  him  back 
to  the  State  he  served  so  faithfully  and  which  loved  him  so  well; 
and  to  her  soil,  precious  with  the  dust  of  patriotism  and  of  valor, 
of  letters  and  of  art,  of  statesmanship  and  of  eloquence,  they 
Lave  committed  the  body  of  him  who  is  worthy  to  rest  by  the 
side  of  the  noblest  and  the  best  of  those  who,  in  the  century  of 
her  history,  have  made  her  the  model  of  a  free  Commonwealth. 

His  last  public  utterance  was  an  admonition  to  those 
with  whom  he  had  acted  politically,  which  they  will  do 
well  to  observe  and  heed;  it  was  characteristic  of  the 
man ;  it  breathed  a  spirit  of  patriotic  devotion  to  country 
and  an  anxious  solicitude  for  the  prosperity  and  welfare 
of  her  people. 

And  to-day,  as  we  stand  around  the  open  grave  of  him 
who  harbored  no  malice,  but  whose  love  of  country  and 
pure  and  lofty  patriotism  knew  no  North,  no  South,  no 
East,  no  West,  let  us  bury  every  feeling  of  bitterness  and 
sectional  animosity ;  let  us  pledge  ourselves  anew  to  our 
country  and  receive  a  new  baptism  into  her  service ;  let  us 
all  rally  around  the  old  flag  with  all  its  glorious  histories 
and  recollections,  drawing  our  inspiration  from  one  living 
fountain,  and,  with  one  heart,  one  purpose,  and  one  impulse, 
press  on  together  to  a  common  and  glorious  destiny. 


152  ADDRESS  BY  MR.  LAWRENCE  ON  THE 


Address  by  Mr.   Lawrence,  of  Ohio. 


Mr.  Speaker :  I  ask  the  indulgence  of  the  House  for  a 
few  moments  while  I  pay  a  brief  tribute  of  respect  to  the 
memory  of  the  illustrious  dead.  It  was  my  good  fortune 
during  seven  sessions  of  Congress  to  board  at  the  same 
house  and  sit  at  the  same  table  with  the  honored  citizen 
whose  demise  we  now  mourn.  During  all  that  time,  and 
more,  I  had  the  honor  to  share  his  friendship.  I  had  many 
opportunities  to  know  the  qualities  of  head  and  heart  which 
render  his  name  dear  to  the  people  of  every  land,  and  which 
have  made  it  illustrious  throughout  the  world.  It  is  well 
that  we  should  pause  in  the  work  of  legislation  to  express 
a  profound  respect  for  these,  to  study  them  as  a  means  of 
instruction  for  ourselves,  and  that  we  may  be  inspired 
with  an  earnest  purpose  to  profit  by  the  lessons  which 
they  teach. 

It  is  one  of  the  advantages  of  our  republican  form  of 
government  that  it  gives  equal  opportunity  to  all  to  fill 
every  place  of  public  trust,  to  render  useful  services  to 
mankind,  and  to  rise  to  the  highest  distinction  which  pri 
vate  worth  and  public  service  and  useful  and  meritorious 


LIFE  AND   CHARACTER  OF  HENRY  WILSON.  153 

labors  can  give.  This  fact  is  illustrated  in  a  remarkable 
degree  by  the  life,  character,  and  services  of  the  deceased, 
and  by  the  fruits  which  they  have  borne.  These  have 
been  so  fully  stated,  and  are  so  widely  known,  and  are  so 
interwoven  with  the  history  of  our  times  and  the  great 
movements  of  nearly  half  a  century  in  behalf  of  humanity, 
right,  and  good  government,  that  it  is  wholly  unnecessary 
for  me  to  speak  of  them  in  detail.  It  is  well  that  these 
should  be  studied  by  young  men  and  all  men,  that  they 
may  know  the  elements  which  made  the  life  of  HENRY 
WILSON  a  grand  success.  To  some  of  these  I  may  briefly 
allude.  First  of  all,  HENRY  WILSON  was  "the  noblest 
work  of  God  " — an  honest  man.  Without  this  quality  no 
man  can  rise  to  and  maintain  permanent  success.  His 
life  illustrated  a  fact  which  cannot  be  too  widely  known: 
that  "there  is  no  excellence  without  great  labor" — Nil 
sine  magno  vita  labore  dedit  mortalibus.  Few  men  ever  de 
voted  more  hours  to  industrious  study,  to  patient  investi 
gation,  to  laborious  attention  to  every  duty,  than  did 
HENRY  WILSON.  The  results  of  these  are  before  us  and 
mankind,  teaching  their  lessons  of  usefulness.  His  offi 
cial  and  literary  labors  were  immense.  In  Congress  he 
was  not  a  great  declaimer,  but  he  was  a  great  orator.  He 
spoke  ably  and  strongly  for  the  right.  Another  charac 
teristic  brought  its  rewards:  he  always  dared  to  do  right, 
and  trust  to  God  and  the  sober  second  thought  of  the 
people  to  sustain  him. 

When  oppression  and  wrong  sit  in  places  of  power,  or 


20  w 


154  ADDRESS  BY  MR.  LAWRENCE  ON  THE 

for  a  time  control  the  popular  will,  men  who  are  not  actu 
ated  from  a  sense  of  duty  may  bow  to  the  storm.  These 
are  dangerous  and  unsafe  men.  HENRY  WILSON  was  not 
of  this  class.  In  all  he  said  or  did  he  was  guided  by  the 
love  and  fear  of  God  and  a  purpose  to  benefit  mankind. 

In  all  the  relations  of  life  the  heart  of  HENRY  WILSON 
overflowed  with  kindness  and  a  tender  regard  for  the  feel 
ings  of  all  his  fellow-men.  He  was  kindly  and  gentle  in 
his  nature;  he  never  turned  away  unheard  the  request  of 
the  most  humble  or  lowly. 

His  life  and  labors  prove  that  his  acquirements  were 
extensive  and  varied,  and  these  he  had  the  natural  and 
educated  ability  to  apply  so  as  to  make  them  bring  suc 
cess,  and  to  enroll  his  among  the  "immortal  names  that 
were  not  born  to  die."  He  has  passed  to  his  reward. 
More  than  a  nation  mourns  his  loss. 

The  good  he  has  done  will  live  after  him;  it  is  a  part  of 
imperishable  history  in  which  he  bore  a  useful  and  con 
spicuous  part.  His  monument  is  more  durable  than  brass. 
It  will  be  seen  and  known  through  the  endless  cycles  of 
eternity. 


LIFE  AND  CHARACTER  OF  HENRY  WILSON.  155 


Address  by    M.r.   Lapham,  of  New  York. 


Mr.  Speaker,  it  would  perhaps  become  my  position  best, 
not  having  been  accustomed  to  speak  on  this  floor,  to 
refrain  from  expressing  any  of  the  thoughts  which  are 
crowding  for  utterance  at  the  present  moment.  There  is, 
however,  a  single  view  of  the  life,  character,  and  services 
of  the  late  Vice-President,  already  referred  to  by  those  who 
have  preceded  me,  upon  which  I  will  dwell  for  a  moment, 
for  I  am  not  willing  that  the  great  State  I  have  the  honor 
in  part  to  represent  should  remain  entirely  silent  on  an 
occasion  like  this. 

When,  at  so  short  a  period  since  that  it  seems  but  as  yes 
terday,  our  Chief  Magistrate  was  stricken  down  by  the 
hand  of  an  assassin,  all  the  civilized  nations  of  the  earth 
united  with  us  in  mourning  and  sympathy  for  the  great 
loss  we  had  sustained  in  the  tragic  death  of  our  patriot 
President. 

Now  that  the  second  officer  of  the  Government  has 
fallen  almost  as  suddenly  by  the  stroke  of  disease,  our 
grief  is  scarcely  less  intense.  Such  emotions  of  sorrow 
arise  not  solely  by  reason  of  the  exalted  stations  from 
which  these  truly  great  men  have  fallen,  but  also  from  a 
remembrance  of  the  humble  origin  of  each.  Each  had 
risen  from  obscurity  and  poverty  to  such  exalted  station, 
not  by  any  sudden  fortune,  but  by  patient  and  steady 


156  ADDRESS  BY  MR.  LAPHAM  ON  THE 

steps  of  progress.  Each  furnished  an  example  of  that 
gradual  growth  in  greatness  and  goodness  attainable  only 
under  institutions  of  government  like  ours.  They  were 
eminently  the  children  of  the  Republic. 

Mr.  WILSON,  amidst  all  the  honors  and  blandishments 
of  office  and  place,  never  lost  sight  of  the  obscure  condi 
tion  from  which  he  had  risen.  He  was  always  full  and 
fervent  in  sympathy  with  suffering  and  intense  hatred  of 
wrong.  He  lived  a  life  of  singular  purity  and  of  the  most 
unswerving  fidelity  to  his  convictions  of  duty.  It  was 
this  which  endeared  him  to  the  masses  of  the  American 
people,  and  which  renders  his  demise  a  source  of  the  most 
profound  grief. 

Although  the  grave  covers  him,  and  all  that  was  visible 
to  us  is  forever  hidden  from  our  sight,  yet,  sir,  it  is  not 
death.  The  noble  example  his  wonderfully  useful  life 
has  furnished  to  the  young  of  every  station  will  long  en 
dure,  and  serve  to  emulate  the  rising  statesmen  of  the 
Republic. 

As  has  been  so  felicitously  written  by  a  Massachusetts 
poet  of  the  late  distinguished  colleague  of  Mr.  WILSON  in 
the  Senate,  so  it  may  also  be  fitly  said  of  him : 

Alike  are  life  and  death, 

When  life  in  death  survives, 
And  the  uninterrupted  breath 

Inspires  a  thousand  lives. 

Were  a  star  quenched  on  high, 

For  ages  would  its  light, 
Still  traveling  downward  from  the  sky, 

Shine  on  our  mortal  sight ; 

So  when  a  great  man  dies, 

For  years  beyond  our  ken 
The  light  he  leaves  behind  him  lies 
.  Upon  the  paths  of  men. 


LIFE   AND   CHARACTER   OF   HENRY  WILSON.  157 


Address  by    Mr.  plair,  of  New  Taampshire. 


Mr.  Speaker,  the  great  men  whose  forms  we  have  seen 
and  who  in  their  lives  have  illustrated  and  vindicated  the 
principles  of  American  liberty  and  of  just  government  on 
earth,  who  preserved  them  by  the  great  deeds  of  the  war 
and  crystallized  the  ideas  evolved  in  the  debates  and  bat 
tles  of  this  momentous  era  into  enduring  forms  of  consti 
tutional  legislation,  are  rapidly  disappearing  from  the 
scene. 

Among  them  all,  with  one  pre-eminent  exception, 
whose  apotheosis  was  by  martyrdom,  there  was  no  man 
who,  by  his  early  and  intense  convictions;  his  life-long, 
zealous,  judicious,  and  unwearied  labors ;  his  perennially 
youthful  and  steadfast  faith  in  the  final  triumph  of  the 
cause  of  freedom  in  the  entire  land ;  who,  by  his  resources 
in  disaster,  his  confidence  even  in  seasons  of  despair,  his 
wise  counsels,  his  sagacious  perception  and  forecasting  of 
the  currents  of  thought  and  of  the  actual  condition  of  the 
public  judgment  and  of  the  impulses  of  the  popular  heart, 
accomplished  more  in  his  life-time  for  his  country  and  for 
mankind,  no  man  who  better  deserves  to  be  immortalized 
among  the  benefactors  of  humanity,  than  he  whose  name 


158  ADDRESS  BY  MR.   BLAIR   ON  THE 

dignified  even  the  lofty  official  appellation  of  Vice-Presi 
dent  of  the  United  States,  and  whose  memory  draws 
sweet  tears  from  the  eyes  of  thousands  of  his  countrymen, 
while  over  his  new-made  grave  the  frozen  winds  of  dis 
tant  New  England  are  singing  their  requiem  to-day. 

HENRY  WILSON  was  a  great  man,  not  alone  in  moral 
heroism,  which  was  perhaps  the  strong  aspect  of  his  char 
acter,  not  alone  because  he  was  ever  equally  ready  with 
his  most  inflexible  associates  to  dare  and  to  do  all  things 
for  his  principles;  but  more  especially  in  this,  that  he 
more  than  most  of  them  knew  how  to  so  do  and  dare  that 
doing  and  daring  might  not  be  in  vain.  He  was  a  prac 
tical  statesman.  He  was  great  because  he  knew  men  and 
dealt  with  them  as  men.  He  recognized  the  truth,  which 
must  ever  be  applied  by  those  who  transmute  abstractions 
into  human  history  and  transfer  the  dreams  of  the  ideal 
into  the  concrete  utilities  of  life,  that  means  must  be 
adapted  to  ends,  and  that  the  average  motives  of  a  nation 
must  be  reached  and  stimulated,  in  order  to  accomplish  a 
national  result. 

The  industrial  institutions  of  a  people  are  seldom, 
unless  remotely,  affected  by  purely  moral  causes.  It  is 
only  when  such  forces  have  taken  hold  of  material  inter 
ests,  that  men  will  consent  to  overturn  the  existing  state, 
and  it  was  given  to  HENRY  WILSON  more  clearly  than  to 
almost  any  other  of  the  great  men  who  led  the  prevailing 
sentiment  of  the  nation  during  its  last  and  great  transi 
tion,  to  comprehend  that  practical  democracy  or  republi- 


LIFE  AND  CHARACTER  OF  HENRY  WILSON.  159 

canism  is  equality  in  the  conditions  of  toil.  His  own 
rugged  lot  in  early  life,  when  he  struggled  with  adverse 
fate  in  his  native  New  Hampshire,  whose  pride  in  his 
career  and  earnest  love  for  the  pure  life  and  noble  man 
hood  of  her  son  are  the  sole  reason  why  my  voice  is  lifted 
in  this  august  presence  to-day,  enabled  him  to  compre 
hend  how  real  freedom  is  something  more  than  mere 
absence  of  legal  restraint ;  that  the  bondage  of  the  colored 
man  was  less  the  consequence  of  positive  law  than  of 
those  relations  and  conditions  of  society,  of  which  the 
positive  law  itself  was  an  outgrowth  and  consequence, 
and  not  a  cause.  He  comprehended  how  all  laborers, 
whether  of  the  North  or  South  and  of  whatever  race,  were 
enslaved  in  a  substantial  sense  by  the  existence  of  the 
institution  of  slavery  anywhere  on  the  national  domain, 
and,  whether  sanctioned  by  the  laws  of  the  land  or  other 
wise,  how  impossible  it  was,  and  is,  for  these  opposing 
tendencies  to  co-exist  permanently  under  one  common 
government. 

He  knew,  for  he  was  instinctively  a  statesman,  that 
unless  the  principle  of  absolutely  free  labor  should  pre 
vail,  whatever  might  be  the  written  law,  the  opposing 
principle  would  wax  stronger  and  stronger,  until  the  labor 
ing  man  everywhere  would  be  practically  enslaved  by 
the  custom  of  the  country.  It  is  a  great  mistake  to  im 
agine  that  all  the  slavery  which  existed  within  the  limits 
of  the  Union  was  confined  to  the  colored  race  and  to  the 
Southern  States.  The  poison  was  in  the  atmosphere  of 


160  ADDRESS   BY  ME.   BLAIR   ON   THE 

the  continent  and  all  over  the  country ;  the  white  race, 
too,  was  in  partial  bondage,  and  neither,  although  greatly 
enlarged,  is  absolutely  and  practically  free  even  to-day. 
Ignorance  is  slavery.  Mighty  prejudices,  the  fetters  of 
the  soul,  are  still  unbroken,  and  magnificent  victories  of 
peace  are  yet  to  be  won.  We  have  entered  upon  a  new 
era,  wherein  the  tendencies  and  prevailing  influences  point 
to  the  ultimate  emancipation  of  all  men,  to  a  period 
wherein  every  yoke  shall  be  broken,  and  the  oppressed 
shall  some  time  in  the  millenial  future  be  absolutely  free. 
In  this  great  exigency  of  our  generation,  which  we  hope 
we  have  passed  fully  through  in  crossing  the  Jordan  of 
this  triumphant  transition,  it  was  given  to  HENRY  WILSON 
to  march  conspicuously  in  front  of  the  halting  host  for 
many  years,  bearing  aloft  the  standard  of  equality  for  all. 
It  was  his  to  rally,  as  with  the  bugles  of  his  native  hills, 
the  more  elevated  sentiments  of  the  nation,  to  largely  aid 
to  forge  its  stray  convictions  into  a  solid  mass,  until  the 
moral  and  material  motives  and  forces  of  the  people  over 
came  all  opposition,  and  the  broad  theory  of  absolute 
freedom  for  all  has  been  established  forever  as  the  fun 
damental  working  model  of  the  Government.  In  this  great 
work  the  war  was  but  an  incident,  terrible,  to  be  sure,  but 
inevitable ;  past  now,  thank  God,  but  full  sure  to  return 
unless  its  causes  are  avoided,  its  fruits  garnered,  and  its 
conclusions  sacredly  regarded ;  and  it  would,  methinks, 
increase  the  joys  of  the  blessed  dead  to  hear  the  generous 
tributes  to  departed  worth,  with  which  these  chastened 


LIFE  AND  CHARACTER  OF  HENRY  WILSON.  161 

walls  have  this  day  echoed  the  eloquent  grief  of  our  sunny 
and  beloved  South  for  him  who  lived  and  died  the  true 
friend  of  every  human  being  on  earth. 

Since  the  termination  of  the  strife,  no  man  has  labored 
more  strenuously  than  the  late  Vice-President,  not  only 
to  secure  the  enactment  of  the  decision  of  arms  into 
proper  and  enduring  forms  of  constitutional  law,  but  more 
especially  have  his  broad  patriotism  and  humane  senti 
ments  made  him  indefatigable  in  his  endeavors  to  secure 
the  full  return  of  reciprocal  love  between  the  sections  of 
our  country  so  unfortunately  imbittered  against  each 
other  by  the  unavoidable  animosities  of  fratricidal  war. 

Probably  no  man  contributed  more  than  he.  to  the 
revival  of  these  gentler  thoughts  and  more  generous  sen 
timents  which  are  prevailing  to-day,  and  which  may  God 
grant  us  to  cultivate  more  and  more  until  no  discordant 
note  shall  mar  the  joy  of  our  centennial  year. 

HENRY  WILSON  is  dead.  His  voice  is  hushed.  His 
great  heart  is  still.  His  form  has  vanished.  To-morrow 
the  Capitol  will  put  away  its  badges  of  mourning,  and 
history  alone  will  know  aught  more  of  him  on  earth  for 
ever.  But  he  has  left  to  the  patriot,  the  statesman,  and 
the  Christian  the  lofty  example  of  an  unsullied  and  illus 
trious  life ;  to  the  toiling  man  and  woman  and  child  of 
every  race  and  clime,  and  of  all  ages  to  come,  an  inspira 
tion  ;  to  his  native  and  to  his  adopted  State,  and  to  the 
whole  country  which  he  loved  so  well,  the  memory  of  a 
character  most  rare  and  exalted,  a  character  which  under 


21  w 


ADDRESS   BY   MR.   BLAIR. 


the  adverse  conditions  of  his  origin  our  precious  institu 
tions  alone  could  have  made  possible ;  and  as  time  rolls 
away  his  fame  will  grow  brighter  and  rise  higher  in  the 
firmament  of  history  until  it  shines  perpetually,  a  fixed 
star  in  the  resplendent  galaxy  of  the  greatest  and  best  of 
his  generation. 

The  resolutions  were  then  unanimously  adopted  and  the 
House  adjourned. 


YD   124 


